The Tiger Complex An "X-Files" Novel by LoneGunGuy "In the rain forest, death wears many faces. [Here] if one stares at an object for long enough, it will eventually metamorphose into something else. A patch of withered bark becomes a butterfly. The pile of leaves at one's feet is a fer-de-lance waiting to strike. Everything is hidden, camouflaged. Soon reality can no longer be trusted. One sees a tiger lurking in every pattern of shadows. Some call it paranoia. I call it the tiger complex." -- from the private journal of Fox Mulder Prologue The jungle thrived in darkness. Sundown came with the familiarity of an old blanket, curling itself around boughs and surrendering itself to the night: but in the interim, a thousand gleaming eyes blinked themselves awake, hooded birds singing like spirits of the dead, jaguars emerging from the shadows to feed. The old man Quassapelagh had been hunting pacas since early evening, his arrow notched and at the ready. He was a big Tirio, broad at the shoulders, with the quiet step that came from years of moving through the undergrowth: you walked on the balls of your feet, careful not to make a sound, knowing that one hot snap of a broken twig would send your game fleeing like a clutch of four-legged puddings. It was tedious, patient work. Once he might have become frustrated after ten minutes of this hide-and-seek and struck before the pacas had strayed sufficiently from the river; but age had taught him the importance of patience so far as these rodents were concerned. They were not stupid beasts. So when he had drawn close enough for the kill, he froze, crouching behind a ceiba tree whose trunk loomed above him like the monumental neck of an apatosaurus, buried up to its shoulders in the loose sandy soil. Not breathing, the old Tirio drew his bowstring taut, keeping the edge of the arrowhead perpendicular to the ground. Fifty yards away the pacas nosed, snuffling, for fallen figs. The one closest to him was a large boar, perhaps twenty pounds in weight, its earth-colored flank spotted with whiteness, its eyes like bright stones. Quassapelagh marked it. Measured the distance. Aimed carefully, almost intuitively, at that mystical juncture where the jugular boiled close to the surface -- and loosed his arrow. It flew ninety feet in blur of hoko feathers and buried itself in the paca's throat. Blood burst forth. The paca fell squealing to its knees, dry sandy dust puffing up around its flailing haunches. Screaming, the herd broke apart, crashing towards the river in panic. Ignoring them, the old man drew another arrow in a movement more fluid than water, let it fly, feeling his pulse quicken as the dart plunged deep into the wounded animal's side. He readied another shaft but held back. Watched. The dying paca rose, staggered blindly forward, collided with a tree and fell to the ground, stunned and whimpering. After a moment it grew still. Shouldering his kill, Quassapelagh turned and headed home, the rain forest uncoiling before him like the entrails of some prehistoric beast. His eyes gleamed like those of an oilbird. He was naked except for a breechcloth, some straggling designs of berry juice sliding in ancient tessellation across his chest, muscles rippling as he walked, burnished snakewood bow slung across one shoulder. The dead paca swung from his other hand. He had tied the piglike rodent's legs together with a vine and looped the knot over his fingers, holding it carefully against his side so that the carcass would not drip. For many minutes he pressed onward, his strong body parting unseen curtains of damp. The paca's flank scratched his thigh as he swung it, the hairs bristly or soft depending on which way they rubbed. In an odd tactile way, he found this fascinating. He was tired, content -- and did not immediately notice the light shimmering above the distant treetops. But once seen, it could not be ignored. The old man stopped beneath the trees. The light lay perhaps fifty miles to the south. It was not fire. It flamed in cold phosphorescence, a single coronal finger rising from the forest, blazing with electricity. Rooted to the ground at some unseen spot, it danced in limpid watercolor hues, red and milky yellow: a ribbon of light, a dragon's tongue. A sterile flame emerging from the canopy. Almost without thinking, he dropped his catch and bow and shimmied up the nearest tree, his sensitive hands finding and gripping minute depressions in the bark. Fifty feet up, he found a sturdy branch and hoisted himself onto it, clinging with his knees to its smooth thickness. Now Quassapelagh had a fine view of the jungle, the ocean of treetops broken only by the alien luminescence flickering against the sky. As he watched, the light became the color of blood. It climbed halfway to the moon and fell back, languid, almost lazy -- yet deadly, too, and luminous, a fine, heart-rending, palpable glow. He was high enough to feel warm breeze against his back. It made the hairs in his nostrils bristle. Below him, the herd of pacas was coughing with fear. Watching the wings of fire glistening above the hylaea, Quassapelagh knew. It was the Mai d'agoa. The cycle had begun again. Squeezing his eyes shut to that ancient brilliance, to the pale fire that rose from the trees as somber and unwavering as a knife, he slid down the tree. He retrieved his kill and ran back to the village, back to the shells of huts and thatches deserted by his people, leaving him alone to remember the secrets that this dark forest kept.... And when, in the days that followed, man after man began to float downstream, their bodies strapped into rafts and cocooned in plastic like bugs smothered in the chrysalis, the old Tirio was not in the least surprised. Part I - The Museum of Clear Ideas Mulder paced across the roof of Fort Gambaro, the sooty tar paper crinkling beneath his feet. The cell phone at his ear. "You're at the Embassy?" he asked. "No, at TeleSur. The telecommunications company. It's the only place you can make a decent phone call in this godforsaken jungle." Doyle's voice was creased with static, like a scrap of newsprint that had been folded too many times. There was a gulping sound. "Listen, we need to talk." "So talk." "Nuh-uh. I don't trust these phones. I'm talking to you face to face." Doyle's voice was soft, with the trace of a lisp, but now it had an edge of suspicion. "Maybe I'm paranoid," he said, "but we've probably got someone listening to this friendly conversation of ours. You know that." Mulder paused. From the rooftop he had a fine view of Paramaribo. It was a haphazard city, thrown together at random in the shadow of the rain forest. Multistory buildings stood alongside thatched huts. Hindu temples flanked high-rises and corrugated metal shacks. "I know that." "I'll bet some asshole is listening right now." Doyle's voice rose, no longer addressing Mulder but shouting at the hypothetical eavesdropper at the end of this hypothetical wiretap: "You hear me, fucker? Think we don't know you're there? Think we give a shit? Jesus Christ -- " "Jesus, Doyle, cool it for a second." Mulder turned away from the view, his hair wisping in the hot breeze. "What did they tell you at the Embassy? You can say that much over the phone, right?" "Not much to say. This whole process is shit from the top down." Doyle took another pull from his water bottle. "Here's the deal. We couldn't free Baker even under normal conditions -- maybe we could see him, talk to him, make sure he was all right, but he'd still be a prisoner of the state. But this quarantine screws everything over. Our hands are tied. We can't even see Baker until this Aquino guy or some other Surinamese high roller gives us the good word." "Is that what they're calling it? A quarantine?" "Yeah. It's -- " "That's total bullshit," Mulder said. He shifted the cell phone to his other hand, waved an arm at the edifice beneath his feet, as if Doyle could see the gesture. "We've got twelve dead bodies lying in a fucking meat locker and they're worried about keeping the one survivor under lock and key? If there was a hot agent involved, this whole fort would be a disaster area by now." "You think I don't know that? I know what's happening. It's a fucking con game, man." Doyle blew air. "That's what it is. These jungle dictators are screwing us over big time." "Maybe they are." Along this side of the fort ran the River Suriname. It sparkled like molten metal. "Why?" Mulder finally asked. "Why what?" "Why are they screwing us over?" "You want to know?" said Doyle. "Meet me in an hour and I'll tell you a few things." Mulder checked his watch. It was eleven o'clock. "I can't. I'm going with Kovac to meet Aquino. Kovac said he'd meet me here once -- " "Now? Mulder, listen to me. Shit." Brief silence on the other end of the line. "You can't stall them till I get there, can you?" "I doubt it. This is Aquino's domain." Even as he said the words, Mulder felt how false they were. This was no man's domain. He lifted his eyes from the river and saw the rain forest stretching out beyond the city limits, extending onward until the trees became a blur of green and orange and black at the horizon. The jungle enveloped everything he saw -- omnipresent, inescapable, the foaming flowers, acalyphas, morning glories, thickets of bamboo, toucans, bellbirds, a riot of color and sound. Mankind was only a visitor to this corner of the world. Even with all the bureaucratic bullshit you had to wallow through, you couldn't forget that. Doyle was speaking again. "Listen, can you do me a favor? Just do something for me." "Go ahead." "Find out what Baker told them. Don't be obvious about it, but send out some feelers. Get a reading on what Aquino knows. I mean, Baker's a good man, but -- " He stopped. Laughed nervously. "Shit, you know what I'm talking about. I wouldn't put anything past those sons of bitches. You know what went down in that building, right? In Fort Gambaro, after the coup?" Mulder knew. In the old days Fort Gambaro had been used as a detention camp for political prisoners. They had been tortured here, and worse -- you could almost feel it in the walls, the residue of ten years. That was why he was on the roof. He didn't like to remain in those rooms, absorbing ancient pain from the woodwork. "I seriously doubt they've been shoving bamboo strips up Baker's fingernails," Mulder said. "Or even -- " He broke off. Kovac was coming towards him, his boots drumming against the rooftop. Mulder lowered his phone, asked: "Time?" Neil Kovac nodded with a hint of impatience. He was in his forties, gaunt but solidly built, with enormous granite cheekbones and thinning hair. "Time," he said, his voice like sandpaper. "Is that Doyle?" "Yeah." "Hang up." Kovac lit a cigarette, shook out the match. In the heat, the smell of tobacco was acrid and sharp. Mulder turned back to the phone. "Doyle, it's time. Call me back in an hour." "I will." Doyle lowered his voice. "Listen, don't forget what I asked. This guy Aquino is going to paint you the picture he wants you to see. You know the quarantine is bullshit. Remember that." There was a gulping sound as Doyle finished his water, then the click of a telephone settling back into its cradle. Kovac was looking at him. "Everything all right?" Mulder snapped his cell phone shut, slid it into the back pocket of his shorts. "Yes." "Let's be off, then." They went inside. Kovac opened the rooftop door that led to the stairs and Mulder found himself among dank smells and old dust. The stairwell was poorly lit. He extended a hand, felt nothing but raw brick. The Dutch had built Fort Gambaro in the seventeenth century, using European bricks and mortar. It towered above the river like a monolith of dried blood. It was perhaps the ugliest building he had ever seen. "Doyle's worried," Mulder said. "Yes, well, I believe we are all worried at the moment." Kovac had a clipped, precise way of speaking that made it sound as though English wasn't his first language -- it was too formal, somehow, and flat, as if he were reading a printed transcript. The ember of his cigarette bobbed in the darkness as they made their way downstairs. "Do you have a shield?" "A what?" "A shield," Kovac repeated. "An FBI badge which you can attach or clip to your person." "Yeah, I do," said Mulder, pulling the ID from his pocket. "You want me to wear it?" "Yes." Kovac opened another door. They stood in a corridor of paralyzing brightness: it might have been a hospital were it not for the stifling, oppressive heat. Despite the fans in the ceiling, the building sweltered. "I'm trying to lay our cards on the table," Kovac explained, glancing at Mulder's clothes. "It would have been good if you had worn a dark suit or FBI fatigues." "It's a hundred degrees outside, and not much cooler in here," Mulder said, clipping the badge to his belt. "I'm not going to asphyxiate myself for the sake of some half-assed show of force. What is this, anyway? You trying to intimidate someone?" "Something like that. What about your weapon? Where is it?" "Confiscated. I guess they have problems with people who carry guns into the heart of the Surinamese military-industrial complex." Mulder stopped in the middle of the hallway. "Level with me. What's the point of trying to set me up as this big bad dude?" "The point?" Kovac checked his pocket watch. "The point, Agent Mulder, is that we have little bargaining power at this point in time. We are weak. And when you are weak you create the illusion of strength. That's an elementary law of survival in the rain forest. It's called the flash and dazzle approach. You use bright colors and shapes to startle the predator. This is what we are attempting. We are flashing our eyespots at Aquino and hoping that he blinks." "And if it doesn't work, what then? We play dead and hope he goes away?" The tightest flicker of a smile. "Let's hope it doesn't come to that." "With all due respect, fuck this. I didn't come to scenic South America to play the heavy in some confidence game. If all you wanted was a Bureau-approved paper tiger, I could have named a number of agents who are significantly more physically intimidating than I can be." "Beginning with Agent Scully?" "That's right, beginning with Agent Scully." Mulder shook his head, amused in spite of himself. "Come on," he said. "What's this all about?" "You tell me," Kovac replied. "What do you think this is about?" "This is what I know." Mulder glanced from side to side, then leaned in close. "Two days ago an undulating stream of light emanated from the jungle in the immediate vicinity of your plantation, a reddish-orange eruption rising in a long continuous ribbon from within the rain forest." "And this is why you came?" "It was what first attracted my attention. This light. It's known as the Andes glow. There are similar sightings in South America every few years. We don't know what it is, or what causes it." He paused. "But within eight hours after this latest glow was seen, twelve men died in the jungle. Your men. Americans. Of the thirteen individuals who were at your plantation two days ago, only one made it back to the city alive. I'm rather interested in hearing what this man has to say. Because this has happened before." Kovac was silent for a moment. Then he nodded his head sharply to the left. Mulder turned, saw a red door standing at the end of the hallway. It was unmarked, smooth, like the entrance to a broom closet. Kovac said: "You want to hear what that man has to say? He's right there. All you need to do is get him released." He turned. "Follow me." They went to the door and Kovac knocked twice. At the second rap the door swung open. Mulder looked inside and realized that he was staring at nothing. No one stood there. For one crazy instant he thought that the door had opened on its own, like something from a haunted house. Then he looked down, and realized his mistake. * * * The satchel was a part of her life. It was a black valise with silver clasps, like a doctor's bag, except when you looked inside you knew that these tools had been designed not to heal but to eviscerate those who were beyond any help. Dana Scully had bought it in Washington a few months after joining the Bureau, and now the leather was battered and worn from being tossed into trunks and glove compartments, squeezed into knapsacks or her good Samsonite bag, hauled, mangled, splattered with fluid. But she had kept it throughout six years of abuse, and after a while she brought it with her wherever she went. You never knew where death might be waiting. Scully set the satchel on the restroom sink and opened it. Her knives were strapped to the inside flap -- the scalpels, the long prosector's knife -- but she ignored them for now and brought out the button mask and gloves and goggles and scrubs, all rolled up and wrapped in sterile paper. She slipped on the scrubs, then looked into the mirror. The woman looking back at her seemed tired -- there were pale crescents under her eyes -- but she didn't feel tired, no, Scully never allowed herself to feel tired going into an autopsy where she had twelve bodies to disassemble. If you were exhausted when you began a job like that, you would collapse like a pile of rags before you got to your third cadaver. Cutting was hard work. The muscles in her forearms and biceps would be aching like hell before the morning was over. She put on the button mask and the goggles. Tied back her hair and fitted the surgical cap to her head. This bathroom was old and poorly lit and the toilet was of the ancient pull-chain kind. The walls smelled of mildew. She pulled on her gloves. Scully tucked the satchel beneath her arm and stepped into the corridor. She was in the basement of Fort Gambaro. It felt like a catacomb, a crypt, the ceiling fans chopping like the blades of a blender. There was a woman in the hallway. She had been marching briskly, arms swinging like those of a Prussian soldier, but now she stopped. She was young, with blonde hair framing delicate features. She produced a badge, held it up for Scully to see. "The name's Haniver," she said. "FBI." Scully's ID was in a pocket on the front of her satchel. "Scully. The same." She tugged down her mask so that Haniver could see her face. "A pleasure. Here to do the autopsy?" Haniver glanced down at Scully's celery-colored scrubs. "Silly question, right? Come on," she said, resuming her rapid walk. "We've got twelve little Indians lined up in a row." "We?" "Yeah." Haniver halted again. "They didn't tell you? I'm from the terrorism division. Chemical weapons. This is what I do." "You're a doctor?" "I went to medical school. I went to law school, too, but that doesn't make me a lawyer. I hope you aren't -- " "The jealous type?" Scully said. "No. If you want to assist, pull on some scrubs and lend a hand, by all means." She offered Haniver her satchel -- but the other agent smiled, lifted an orange nylon knapsack. "I brought my own. Give me a second to change." Haniver went into the restroom, propping the door open so that they could talk. Scully stood in the corridor, waiting, staring up at the hypnotic revolutions of the fans. "How long have you been in Suriname?" she asked. Through the bathroom door, Haniver's voice echoed across the tiles. "I landed an hour ago. Looks like your office got the word before mine did." "Barely." Scully fussed with her gloves, pulling the latex tight. "In all honesty, I'm not sure why I'm on this case." "Twelve American citizens were the victims of terrorism on foreign soil. It's the FBI's jurisdiction, isn't it?" "You think we're looking at a terrorist attack?" "Like I said, this is what I do." Haniver emerged in green scrubs, tucking her blonde hair beneath a surgical cap. She was perspiring. "It's too damned hot in this dungeon," she said. "But I hear they stored the bodies in a -- what was it again?" "A meat locker." "Oh. Why?" Scully started down the hall. "Officially it's because the University Hospital couldn't handle the overflow. Really it's because someone wants to keep an eye on these bodies." "Graveyard politics. Jesus." Haniver snapped on gloves. "A meat locker. You sure it's at the right temperature? "I called ahead." They stood before the big steel door. Scully put her hand against the metal -- she could see it reflected faintly in the dull surface -- and saw that the lock was a simple one, a pin on a chain. But someone had taped seals across it. The seals were on slick paper, with the flag of Suriname and a dense Dutch text that Scully couldn't decipher. She fitted a blade to her scalpel handle and was about to slice through the seals when Haniver took her by the wrist. "No spacesuits?" she asked. "Not unless you feel the need," Scully replied. "Even if there were some threat of contamination -- just look around you. We've got fans in the ceiling. Ventilation ducts. This isn't an airtight facility. Whatever our victims carried with them must be halfway to Brazil by now." She cut the seals and gripped the handle. The door swung slowly open, like the entrance to a mausoleum. The whisper of cold and death in their faces as they pulled on their masks and went inside. Twelve bodies lay before them like dark Christmas presents, zipped into black bags and lined up on a pair of wooden tables. Some pork loins still sat on the corner shelf, waiting to be breaded and baked in the cafeteria on the second floor. "And then there's Baker," Haniver was saying. "Excuse me?" "Nick Baker, the one survivor. He's been in quarantine ever since -- well, you read the report. He ferried these bodies up the river and he's been under observation ever since. If he's still alive and shows no sign of infection -- " "The danger is probably gone, right." Scully turned to Haniver. Only her blue eyes were visible above the mask. "Let's look at our first victim." "This is where we're doing the autopsy?" "It's either here or the hallway floor. Either way, this is going to be a hell of a mess." Scully looked around for her dissecting table, finally saw the steel slab lying just inside the doorway. The tabletop was curved like a shallow basin to keep fluids from dripping down. An old-fashioned hand-pump rested on top. "Fill this with water from the sink in the bathroom," Scully said, handing the pump to Haniver. "I'll prop the door open and try to set the thermostat to a reasonable temperature." When Haniver returned, Scully had already managed to lift the first body onto the steel table. Its tag read "Albert DeFillips." The locker was warmer than before but Scully still shivered slightly, scalpel at the ready, as Haniver unzipped the body bag and pulled its halves apart to reveal the cargo it contained. The two women stared at the body inside. "Shit," Scully finally said. "Yeah." Haniver looked up. "Looks like we got sloppy seconds." Scully couldn't take her eyes off the man inside the bag. Albert DeFillips was a white male in his middle thirties, balding slightly, with that odd expression of tranquillity and calm that often characterized the faces of the dead. He had already been autopsied. The familiar forked incision ran up his belly, but it had been sewn back together. Scully could smell feces from when his intestines had been emptied. He had been disassembled and reassembled by hands other than her own, and she didn't know who had done it. "I can't believe this," she murmured. "Wait," said Haniver. "The brain." "What?" "Did they take his brain or leave it? That's what I need to know. Look at this." Haniver took one of DeFillips's hands and showed it to Scully. "He's got blue fingernails. And look here." She dropped the hand. Lifted the dead man's eyelids. The irises were brown but irises were all he had: the only blackness was a microscopic spot in the center, like the dot of a pencil. "Blue fingernails. Pinpoint pupils. You know what that says to me?" Scully did. "A nerve agent." "That's right. We need to take a look at the brain. Open up his skull and see if they left anything." "Hold on." Scully examined DeFillips's head, pushing apart the soggy brush of his hair. Sure enough, the incision was there, a deep stitched cut running from ear to ear across the top of his scalp. Scully used the point of her knife to cut the stitches one at a time. A small amount of coagulated blood oozed out beneath her blade. She frowned and tugged the skin down the dead man's face, laying bare the smooth ostrich egg of his calvarium. The skull had already been sawed open. Scully removed the top of DeFillips' brain pan. She wasn't sure what she would find. The question of what to do with the brain after an autopsy was often taken as a gauge of the cutter's personality. Back in the States you cut it open on the spot, or you stuck it in formalin to let it harden, or you slid it back inside the skull when you were done, or you did a number of other things. Scully had no idea what they did in Suriname. "What the hell?" Haniver said. A strange damp membranous substance tumbled out from DeFillips's skull. Scully reached down, took a bit of it between her fingers. It was very thin and pulled easily apart. "What is it?" "It's brown paper. They stuffed his skull with crumpled brown paper." Scully paused. "I know where the brain is." With her scalpel, Scully cut open the incision in the corpse's chest, then unfolded him like an origami doll. "Jesus," said Haniver. The man's insides were a mess of organs. His heart, lungs and bowels had been dropped back inside without any care for order. His brain had been laid on top, like a rare garnish. When Scully spoke again, her voice was grim. "This was a rush job. You cut someone open, fine, but when you're done you put the pieces back together. It's hard to fit the brain back into the cranium, though, so when you're in a hurry you just toss it into the chest cavity, like this. Whoever did it was pressed for time." "Someone was trying to finish before we got here." Scully nodded. "The other bodies. Are they the same?" Haniver walked over to the long tables, unzipped one bag after another. "Yes." "I can't believe this," Scully said again. She felt a sudden rush of anger. After working as a federal ghoul for six years she had developed her own set of values, her own strange sense of violation. Getting stuck with the leavings of someone else's postmortem was a violation like that. "These were American bodies," she said. "If the Surinamese cut these men open on their own, there'll be hell to pay." Haniver zipped the cadavers back up. "I don't think the Surinamese did this." "No? Then who did?" But Haniver didn't say anything. Instead she came back, her thoughts locked securely behind her deep gray eyes, and helped Scully lift the viscera from within the desecrated corpse. * * * Ferdinand Aquino, the unofficial opposition leader of the Republic of Suriname, leaned back in his wheelchair and lit a cigar with a wooden match. "Rubber," he said. "That's where it all began, you know." Aquino was a tiny Dutchman with a sharp beard and a head of bushy red hair. His ruined legs were like broomsticks, but his upper body was wiry and strong. Standing, he couldn't have been more than a shade over five feet tall; when he answered the door in his wheelchair Mulder had looked right over him and seen nothing, which was why the FBI agent had thought, briefly, that the door had swung open of its own volition. Now Aquino tasted the smoke thoughtfully. "Until 1876, the Amazon was the only place in the world where you could find rubber trees. The Indians knew about them for ten thousand years before the first colonists landed on these shores. For most of the nineteenth century, rubber was currency to us. We manufactured tires for half the world." His eyes misted over with nostalgia, as if he had seen the marvels of which he spoke. "The rubber industry was in Brazil," Kovac said. He and Mulder sat at the other end of Aquino's desk, which loomed before them like a solid acre of polished wood. The cigar irritated him. Aquino had made him extinguish his own cigarette before entering the office. "It was in Amazonia." Aquino waved his hand dismissively. "Borders do not concern me. Let elected officials worry about where to draw the line, or how to inscribe a triangle within a semicircle. I look to the larger picture. In 1876 an English botanist stole seventy thousand pounds of rubber fruits and planted the seeds in Indonesia. He stole rubber from the Amazon. Like Prometheus. Today, if you want to deal in rubber, you must be able to speak Bahasa." Kovac did not make the obvious point, that Aquino was a white male living in a nation that had been colonized and recolonized so many times that the official language was Dutch, the predominant religion was Hindi and the majority of the population was black. Instead, he tried to get his bearings. The office in which they sat was ostentatious and somewhat vulgar compared to the rest of the building: like Paramaribo itself, Fort Gambaro seemed to have been assembled from the spare parts of other civilizations, its spaces ranging from the sterile white corridors of the upper level to the museum on the ground floor, and the dark catacombs below. It almost reminded him of the jungle, with its many layers and understories. This office, then, was the canopy, the only place where light could shine. A skylight had been set into the ceiling. Through it, the sun beat down like the mantle of God Himself. "What's the point of this story?" Mulder asked. "The point is that the theft of rubber began the long process of technological espionage which has plagued our continent to the present day," the general said. "A process which you seem eager to continue." "You believe that we have stolen something from Suriname?" said Kovac. "I do not believe anything." Aquino sighed and steered his wheelchair from behind the desk. He moved the wheelchair the way another man might play an idle game of cat's cradle: Kovac imagined Aquino tracing unseen patterns on the thick carpet, diamonds, criss-crossing lines, like the marks on the back of a fer-de-lance. "I do not believe, I do not assume, I do not make conjectures or indulge in speculation. I know. I know that you are trying to cheat us, my friend." "I am only a private businessman." "That does not absolve you from suspicion. On the contrary, it heightens it. I don't pretend to trust Americans; I do business with them because my country demands it." "We have been through this many times," Kovac said. He knew that Aquino wasn't listening but went through with it anyway, talking in his clipped, precise manner. "My company is a manufacturer of cosmetics. In our industry we utilize many exudates from tropical plant species, including the oil of the copal tree, or the tree of heaven. Two years ago we approached your Ministry of Natural Resources with a proposal to set aside one hundred acres of rain forest for the harvesting of copal oil. This proposal was approved and we have not reneged. We have paid your country generously for the use of your land. In return, you have always granted us unimpeded access into the interior. But now you refuse it. Why?" By now the cover story had become almost second nature to Kovac, and he rattled it off like a professional. He watched Aquino carefully, looking for a response. The general puffed on his cigar, then wheeled back behind his desk. "They say that nature works imperfectly," Aquino said. "Like an artist with a hand that trembles. I hear that tremble in your voice, Kovac, and I know that you are lying." Kovac kept his face perfectly still, like some clay that was hardening to stone. He was not dismayed or even surprised. He had anticipated this, and he knew what needed to be done. His mind began to turn in a new direction. Apparently satisfied, Aquino turned to Mulder. "And what of you? What interest does the United States government have in these matters?" "I'm not here as a representative of the United States government," Mulder said, his voice formal. "I'm here to investigate the deaths of twelve American citizens. I have no interest in any transactions that Mr. Kovac has made with you or your government except as it relates to my investigation." "In that case, why are you here?" "There is a man," Mulder said quietly. "His name is Nick Baker. Two days ago he airlifted twelve dead bodies into Paramaribo after ferrying them down the river from a plantation deep within the interior. He was alone. Immediately after landing at Pengel International Airport, he was arrested and taken into custody here, at Fort Gambaro, ostensibly for a quarantine but really so that you, General Aquino, could detain and question him at your leisure." Mulder leaned forward. "I want to talk to this man. He is the sole survivor of a disaster which took place somewhere in the rain forest, a disaster the nature of which remains unknown." A brief silence. "Not so unknown," Aquino said. He reached beneath his desk and pressed a hidden button. Kovac heard a hiss of static, a mechanical cough, and then the room was filled with the sound of a man's voice, scratchy and filtered through wave after wave of interference. Kovac recognized the voice immediately. "This message was intercepted two days ago," Aquino said above the din. "It was transmitted by radio from your plantation to an office building in Paramaribo, a building that has been rented in your name, Kovac, for the past two years. We haven't been able to identify the speaker for ourselves, although I'm sure you know who it is." Kovac nodded. "James Lifton. We hired him to perform graft work on the copal trees." Then he listened to the recording for what seemed like the thousandth time, his pulse no longer quickening as the voice rose in intensity from a whisper to a whimper to a scream, only to shatter itself to pieces, in the end, on the head of the shortwave beach.... The voice said: "Hello Parbo, Parbo, BFDP headquarters in Paramaribo come in please...we've got two men dead, at least two, maybe more...can't go outside...from where I'm standing I can see Albert lying on the ground...he's covered with the little flames...fire on the trees...urgent situation...they're dead, they're all dead, and something's coming...Jesus there's fire on the trees but they aren't burning, everyone's dead and there's fire on the trees...it's all around me...listen to me, please, please listen, listen to me -- " And then came an enormous crash and a strangled scream, and all was silent except for the low faint whine of feedback and the hum of wind through the treetops. * * * "There is something exquisitely depressing," Haniver said, "about cutting these men open for the second time." They were on their seventh corpse. The routine was numbing. Once each autopsy was done, Scully would roll the body away and Haniver would take the hand-pump and wash the residual blood and bile from the slab, letting the fluids trickle through holes in the table to the basin beneath. She could hear the dripping sound it made. The meat locker was still very cold and they were tired. At one point Scully almost cut herself, the scalpel blade slicing neatly through the latex on the back of her hand but somehow not scratching the skin. Their discoveries were monotonous. Each body had pinpoint pupils and fingernails with a bluish cast. Their lungs were clotted with mucus. Haniver wanted to get a tissue sample beneath the microscope as soon as she could. But there was more than enough for a diagnosis. Albert DeFillips had told them himself. Some kind of nerve agent had entered his blood and crossed the lining of his brain and he had convulsed and lost consciousness and suffocated to death as his respiratory system short-circuited and his legs beat out a tuneless rhythm on the white jungle soil. Eventually the results became so familiar that the FBI agents no longer had to discuss them aloud. They could speak of other things. "Depressing," repeated Haniver. "They're all jumbled up inside because someone has been here first. It's a mess. It isn't how this is meant to be." "No, it isn't." Scully was up to her elbows inside a black man with rippling muscles and a gray mustache. "I don't know about you, but whenever I open someone up there's usually that thrill of anticipation. You know? Because you never know what they'll look like on the inside." Haniver spoke as one would speak of a pleasant memory, a stroll through a meadow or an art museum. The inside of the human body was a museum that few were allowed to explore. "I've been in the morgue," she said, "when they've taken apart mundane bodies and flabby figures and revealed the most beautiful viscera you could ever imagine...." Scully nodded. "When I was in medical school I had to take the subway home each day. I would look at my fellow travelers and dissect them in my mind. I would take comfort in what lay beneath the surface, even when I was looking at a drunk or some craven teenager." She lifted out the dead man's organ tree. "You see? We're all different on the inside. The heart or liver is as individual as a face." She pointed to the delicate webbing of arteries. "The branching vessels always ramify in their own way. But you need to take apart hundreds of bodies before you start to see it." They finished the seventh body. They were more than halfway there. The two women were bringing the eighth victim to the table when Haniver said: "Listen, I've only been assisting so far. How about letting me be prosector on this one?" "Sure." Scully stretched, cracked her knuckles. "I'm tired of this. You want the knife?" "No thanks," Haniver said. "I brought my own." She kneeled, opened her orange knapsack and from a leather sheath drew a blade so striking that Scully jumped slightly backward at the sight of it. It was at least ten inches long, with a smooth edge and a strangely twisted handle that Haniver had wrapped with black friction tape. She lifted the knife and brandished it in a showy way that made Scully more nervous than the weapon itself. "That's a big knife," Scully finally managed. "It's a catalogue item," Haniver said, letting it play with the light. "They make it from a steel railway spike, the hardest steel in the world. I can't work with standard prosector's knives, you know -- the blades are too narrow and too long." She turned with her knife to the next corpse. "Shall we resume?" "We shall." Scully unzipped the body bag and wondered whether Haniver knew how to use the knife the way it was meant to be used. She looked down. This corpse was different. Scully had gone through every external examination with care and knew for a fact that the other victims had been unmarked except for the occasional scratch or bug bite. But this man -- young, sandy-haired and rather good-looking -- had a broken head. His skull had been bashed in like crockery. "His name's James Lifton," said Haniver, reading from the tag. "Looks like he had a pretty bad break." A man's voice from behind them: "Looks like they all had a pretty bad break, Jenny." The two women turned. Mulder stood in the entrance to the meat locker, peering inside, his hands in his pockets. Scully opened her mouth and was about to say something when Haniver cut her off: "Fox?" she said, her face radiating nothing but delighted surprise. "Holy Jesus, Fox!" Then Haniver ran to him and hugged him with the big knife still clutched in her hand. After a moment Mulder hugged her back, looking sheepishly at Scully over the other woman's shoulder. Scully just stood there. She didn't know whether it was a flicker of jealousy or a feeling more profound than that, but something about this sudden show struck her as wrong. False. As if Haniver were putting on a show for Mulder's benefit. Then the feeling passed. Scully stripped off her gloves, went to the others. Haniver was still talking. "Jesus, Fox, I haven't seen you in -- shit, it must be five or six years. How's that assignment of yours going? And your partner? What's -- " She broke off and turned to Scully. Her eyes were huge. "Oh my God!" Haniver said, smiling in crazy disbelief. "You're Dana Scully!" Scully smiled back. * * * "But you've got to understand," said Haniver, "that this woman is very distinguished-looking." "That's right." Mulder took a swallow of coffee and grinned into the cup. "That's right, she would walk into the store with this gray scarf over her head, and her expensive gray gloves -- " "Let me finish this one, all right?" Haniver turned to Scully, settling into the story. "So this very proper, handsome woman goes up to the clerk behind the counter at the diamond boutique and says, 'Excuse me, miss, I'd like to see a 1.25 carat diamond with a round cut, please.' Because she's engaged, and her fiancee wants her to shop around for the ring." "She even shows the clerk a picture of the lucky husband-to-be," Mulder said. "So she takes the diamond," Haniver continued, "and looks at it for a bit, asks about the price, then goes 'Thank you very much,' hands it back and walks away. And the clerk forgets all about it until she totals up her inventory that night and discovers a small weight discrepancy. Just a fraction of a carat. This fraction of a carat is missing. So what do you think happened?" They sat in the cafeteria on the second floor of Fort Gambaro, paper cups of coffee in their hands. The room was deserted except for them and a handful of sunburnt Dutch tourists reading manga comic books. Scully drained the last of her coffee. "I don't know. What happened?" "In San Francisco," Haniver said, "this woman purchased a small diamond, maybe half a carat. Then she drove to Seattle. In every large city along the way she would stop at a diamond boutique and ask to see a stone of the same cut and a slightly larger weight. Then, when the clerk wasn't paying attention, she'd switch the two diamonds, keeping the larger one and leaving a stone that weighed a few points less. After twelve cities she'd doubled the size of her diamond and quadrupled her original investment." "The Bureau got involved because she crossed state lines," said Mulder. "It was Haniver who tracked her down. She called every diamond boutique on the west coast and asked if they were short a couple of carats. Then she plotted her path on the interstate system and nabbed her the following week." "Not quite so glamorous as catching a serial killer. But when I arrested her in the store, the bitch fought me. I mean, she got her nails in good." "You were in the paper for that. I clipped the article." Haniver shrugged. "I was slumming. That was after that mess in Tokyo. They took me off chemical weapons for six months and had me busting little old ladies for grand larceny." Her face clouded briefly; then she grinned at Mulder. "You clipped the article, huh?" "I did." "Why the hell didn't you give me a call? Back at Quantico we were the best of friends." "Back at Quantico we had our share of trouble. The marksmanship instructor said you had the strongest hands he'd ever seen. I believed him, because half the time they were wrapped around my neck." Haniver smacked him on the shoulder. "That's because half the time you were a stuck-up son of a bitch." "I guess some things never change." The conversation fell into a lull. Scully toyed with her cup, peeled the paper out into a long corkscrew helix. They'd managed to finish the rest of the bodies fairly quickly, working on two at a time, Haniver and herself hacking away while Mulder watched in silence. Near the end it had been almost dreamlike. She had watched her own hands slicing stitches, her lips puffing vapor, her mind wandering. Her mind was wandering now. Mulder had said something. "What's that?" "I said there's something wrong with this case." Mulder told them about his meeting with Aquino, the accusation that Kovac was lying, the taped radio message, the refusal to release Baker. "If this investigation is stalling," he said, "it's because the Surinamese don't trust Kovac. Frankly, I don't blame them." "What do you mean?" "Kovac says his plantation was harvesting copal oil for use in cosmetics. I can buy the first part. I've seen the documentation, I've seen the pictures, and there's no doubt they were growing copal trees down there. But...." He trailed off. Hesitated. "But if they were using the trees for something else," he said, choosing his words carefully, "something more interesting, they would have every reason to conceal it. Suriname treats its land as the patrimony of the state. When a foreign investor comes to them with a plan for natural resource exploitation, he deals directly with the government, as a joint venture. Under such circumstances, someone like Kovac might be less than candid about his reasons for going into the rain forest." "What do you think is really going on?" Haniver asked. "I don't know. But in fifteen minutes I'm meeting with someone who probably does." "Who?" "Isaac Doyle. You know him?" When Scully and Haniver shook their heads, Mulder explained. "I've been talking to him on the phone for a while now. From what I gather, he's been part of Kovac's team from the beginning -- he was here in Paramaribo when they got the emergency transmission. I did a background check. Doyle changed majors twice in college, from psychology to entomology, then from entomology to his current field. He's a geneticist." Scully raised an eyebrow. "You think we're dealing with some kind of bioengineering program?" The sharp ring of a cell phone prevented Mulder from answering. The three agents checked their phones simultaneously, bringing them out like soldiers on a rifle drill. Mulder was the winner. He spoke briefly with the caller, hung up, turned to the others. Drummed his fingers on the table for emphasis. "That was Doyle," he said. * * * There were layers upon layers. In 1991, when Suriname finally returned to democracy after a decade under military rule, the army abandoned all but the topmost floor of Fort Gambaro. Ferdinand Aquino still held court in his well-feathered canopy nest, but the lower levels remained empty and unused. Eventually the building was renovated and exhibits were brought in, gourds and arrows and yellowing charters, and the first two floors became a museum of the history of Suriname. But beneath the surface the catacombs remained, and the crypts: a museum of a secret history, a secret language, where tourists did not walk and cameras were not permitted. Stepping inside, Mulder's first thought was that he was back in the gulag. "It does kinda look like that, doesn't it?" Doyle said. "It's our common legacy. Take all the countries in the world, all the governments, peel away the surface and you'll find something like this. The cages in the basement. Thank God for the underlying unity of the fucking human race." The corridor was long, lit by a naked bulb that swung from the ceiling. On both sides stretched a series of cages, tiny cubicles hammered together from piping and chicken wire, their hinges smashed, the doors hanging. Inside each was barely enough room to stand upright. This was the lowermost level of Fort Gambaro, far beneath the earth, where the political prisoners had been brought during periods of military dominion. It reminded Mulder of the complex at the rear of the zoo where lions and tigers prowled at night, sleeping on concrete floors in cages that were far too small, breaking their teeth on the bars. He said so. "I know. It creeps me out, too." Doyle hooked his fingers through the fencing that made up the walls of the nearest cage. The dust left dark gray lines on the palms of his hands. "But with all this chicken wire, there's no way they can tap our conversation. Too much interference." Doyle was thin and bearded, his hooded black eyes never seeming to focus on one object but skidding smoothly, like bits of ice on a skillet. Mulder thought he looked a little like a dried-out Persian prince. "You have something to tell me?" Mulder asked. "Hm?" "On the phone you said that the government of Suriname was trying to screw us over. Those were your words, Doyle, not mine." Doyle fished a matchstick from the front pocket of his shirt, began to chew on it. His motions were precise, maybe a little too quick, like someone who was good with his hands but rarely had much to do with them. "This is a fucked-up country, Mulder," he said at last. "You've got to realize that. These people are grabbing at whatever they can." "What do you mean?" "You know anything about Surinamese history? Fuck it, of course you don't. This is a pissant nation by any standards. We're shoehorned here between Guyana and French Guiana, a pimple on the back of Brazil. You think the United States gives a shit about what happens here? Suriname has precisely one thing going for it, and that thing is going down the tubes as fast it can." "What is it?" "Bauxite. For making aluminum. As long as they've got bauxite mines, the United States will return their phone calls. But they're mining themselves out. They'll be able to last maybe five, ten more years, but after that....?" Doyle flicked his matchstick away. "They're desperate," he concluded. "They've been experimenting with diamond or gold mining, shrimp, timber, but it's hopeless. Their infrastructure is shot to hell. Dutch aid is all that keeps them going." "But this thing with Kovac could change all that. Is that what you're saying?" Doyle gave a little shrug. "It's not cosmetics, is it?" "You might call it that." The geneticist giggled. "Cosmetics. We're painting a new face on our project -- the face we want Suriname to see. But the mask is cracking. If we don't get Baker out soon, the whole operation could be in deep shit." He fixed Mulder with his odd wandering eyes. "That's why I need your help." Mulder met the stare. "What are you talking about?" "I need you to get Baker out of quarantine before he kills the whole deal. You're with the government, you must be able to do something -- " Doyle was giving him credit for more power than he had. Mulder might have said so, but something held him back. The thought that he might be able to force Doyle's hand. "Maybe I can," he said, leaning against a cage. The wire sagged, creaking, beneath his weight. "But you've got to level with me first. Kovac isn't in the cosmetics business, is he?" After a moment, Doyle shook his head. "No." "Tell me what he does." "He's with the DOE." This was unexpected. "The Department of Energy?" Mulder asked.. "He works for the government?" "Didn't you feel the strings being pulled? That pressure was coming from on high, man. This isn't about twelve dead men, this is about the technology and money we've poured into this fucking project for the past two years. I'm not going to let the Surinamese take it all away from me. They knew about it, they were ready to pounce, they had our plantation under fucking satellite surveillance for the last six months -- " "Wait." Mulder grabbed Doyle by the shoulder. "Are you saying that there are satellite photographs of the plantation? That they were still taking pictures when this disaster happened -- when these men died?" "I'm saying more than that," Doyle said, freeing his shoulder from Mulder's grip. "I'm saying that they were responsible. I'm saying that Aquino and his coalition killed those men. They killed them and now they're getting ready to take over the whole fucking country, just like they did twenty years ago." He grinned. "What do you think of that?" Mulder didn't respond. Around them, the cages seemed to close in like jaws. * * * Nick Baker opened his eyes. For a second he didn't remember where he was. There was canvas beneath his back, a sour taste in his mouth. Above him, the mottled wasteland of the ceiling. In his dream there had been a sky exploding with billions of stars. He had tried to count them all and his brain had short-circuited beneath the suffocating weight of zeroes, the numbers crowding away his memories, pressing against the inside of his skull. Then a great irregular shape had risen against the sky, blotting out the heavens, and he awoke. Now Baker sat up and looked around. The room was bare and depressing and dark. The bathroom was to his left, its walls stained a vile green. He tried to concentrate, to gather his thoughts. He was not alone. In the middle of the room was a table, and at this table sat Ferdinand Aquino. The crippled general had a blue surgical mask tied around the lower half of his face, hiding his nose and mouth. Baker knew that it was only pretense. If Aquino were really worried about some kind of infection, he would have worn goggles to protect the membranes of his eyes, and probably gloves as well. The mask was only for the sake of decorum. Best to deal with him directly. "Good morning, Aquino," Baker said. He rose from the cot and sat down at the table. The package taped between his shoulders pressed urgently against his back. "Good morning," the general said. There was a tray on the table between them, a dish with some fruit and a jug of water. It had been there since yesterday. Aquino gestured to the platter, his eyes glittering like shards of quartz. "You haven't touched your food," he said, his mouth working behind the mask. "I'm not hungry." Baker rubbed his eyes. Aquino had been waiting here for a long time, he knew, hoping to catch him off-balance when he awoke. He needed to focus. "Thank you anyway." The general clucked his tongue. "I must say, we are beginning to worry. You have been fasting for two days. Is it stress, or an upset stomach? Do you dislike the meals that we have provided?" His fingertips danced gleefully across the tabletop. "Or you afraid that we might try to poison you?" Baker suspected that this conversation was being recorded, and spoke accordingly. "I'm worried you might try to feed me something without my knowledge or consent. I like to know what medications my doctors are prescribing. I can name a number of drugs you may decide to use. Sodium amytal is odorless and tasteless, and it loosens the tongue. That's what you want, isn't it?" Aquino shook his head, amused. "I have never met anyone more paranoid than you." "I have reason enough to be paranoid." "Even if we wanted to introduce a drug into your system, there is more than one way of doing so." Aquino smiled, the mask bunching around his face. "We could slip a needle into your arm as you slept, for example." "No," said Baker. "You wouldn't do anything that might leave a mark. I'm going to be released eventually." "But of course. We have no plans to keep you any longer than necessary." "Then let me go." "I am afraid that is impossible. You are in a state of quarantine. Whatever questions we ask are merely intended to further our investigation into certain medical matters." Aquino leaned forward. "You brought twelve dead bodies into our city. Certainly you must have expected that your actions would inspire curiosity and concern on our part." There was a wet spot on the mask from where the general had been speaking. For some reason Baker couldn't look away from it. "I've told you everything that you need to know," he said. "And the rest is silence, I suppose." Baker stood. "I need to use the bathroom." Aquino only looked at him, murderous good humor dancing in his eyes. "Then use it." * * * Incredibly enough, there was a lock on the inside of the bathroom door. Baker did his morning business, washed his hands and stared into the basin for a long time. There was a voice in the back of his mind. He tried to ignore it but soon it became impossible. The package between his shoulder blades. He needed to look at it. For the past two days it had been hidden away in the small of his back. There was a place midway up the spine that allegedly went unnoticed in a routine pat-down search; he had read about it years ago, in some true crime paperback bought for an airplane ride, and in the rain forest he had secured the package there with a crooked X of duct tape. It was his cross to bear. Baker pulled off his shirt. He had been wearing these clothes for longer than he cared to remember, and the smell of death had permeated the fabric. When he raised his arms, he stank like a lion. He looked at himself in the mirror, looked at the purplish bruises blossoming angrily across his chest, the shallow red scratches where he'd cut himself without feeling it. "Hell," he said. The trip back to the airstrip had been a difficult one. He had carried the bodies one by one through the undergrowth, and by the end had been quite ready to lie down and take his place among the dead. Now Baker reached behind him and peeled the duct tape from his skin, wincing as a few hairs came away with the package. It was in his hands. It was a stack of Polaroids held together with a rubber band and wrapped inside two plastic bags. He had not examined the pictures when he took them, and he wasn't sure why he needed to look at them now. For some reason Baker thought of Quassapelagh. The airstrip in the jungle ran along the edge of a Tirio village, and in that village there lived a man. He was an old Indian with gleaming black eyes and a face like a dried apple, but he was still strong and graceful and at home in the world, hunting the pacas, growing manioc and cassava in his garden, living alone with a shelf of books and the murmur of wind in the treetops. For Quassapelagh was a bit of a Thoreau. He had worked during his youth on boats and ships throughout the hemisphere, learning the way of ropes and sails, and later of the great propellers and engine rooms. By night he had educated himself with battered paperbacks and secondhand textbooks, moving from Paramaribo to Port-au-Prince, from Caracas to Puerto Cabezas, and from there ending up somewhere in Louisiana. He spent two years in America and decided to return home; but when he came to his village again, he found an abandoned shell, empty of people, eroded by insects. There was no mystery here, no ominous light above the trees: Christianity and the allure of quinine and tennis shoes had civilized the Tirios and destroyed, in a generation's time, a way of life older than the pyramids. And so Quassapelagh had taken it upon himself to remain in the jungle, maintaining the old ways. Standing there in the bathroom, the photos in his hands, Baker thought of the long conversations he had shared with Quassapelagh. Whenever the BFDP team needed to send someone into Paramaribo for a few days, Baker usually got the assignment, mostly because he was fluent in Sranan Tongo and the various Indian dialects one might encounter along the way; and as a result, he had spent many nights as the old Tirio's guest. He remembered one night in particular. They had been sitting in the dusty clearing at the center of the village, stirring the embers of the fire, when Baker had offered to show Quassapelagh some pictures of his family. Quassapelagh had politely declined to look. Baker had asked why. The Indian had rested quietly for a moment, lying on the sandy soil. "Have you ever wonder, Baker," he finally said, "why my people refuse to have their pictures taken? No doubt you have notice. For we do become rather upset when you bring out the camera." "I had noticed that, yes." "Know why?" Baker had stared into the reddish coals. "I always assumed it had something to do with beliefs about the spirit -- that there was concern that the camera could take a person's soul away. Or that by possessing a man's image you somehow had power over him...." But Quassapelagh had frowned. "Without meaning to offense, I must refer to that as James Frazer bullshit. The white man always thinks that the Indian has primitive idea of the soul, that it escapes from one's mouth as one sleeps and wanders through the jungle, or that it can be sucked away like water or air. But we have a more interesting idea of the soul than you do." "What do you mean?" "We understand how it fit with the body. European man either drowns his flesh with physical pleasure, fats and gravies, or he whip it into submission to bring himself close to God. But the Tirio live in the open. We are confident in the strength of our flesh, and in the strength of the soul also." "So you don't think a camera can take your soul from you." "Course not." "Then why do you object to photographs?" "Because we understand change, and we cherish it. Maybe you not understand. But the human face is always evolving. I do not mean over the centuries and millennia, but on a moment by moment basis. Your face changes as I look at you, like sea anemone or sand dune. It is very wonderful. The face of the earth is the same. You look at a tree and see it standing like a pillar, but it is not a pillar, and it holds up nothing but itself. The change is the pattern of the world. And a photo kills it more savagely than death itself." Quassapelagh's eyes had reflected the fire, his pupils dots of red. "Even a dead man is changing. His expression on the second day is different from the first. There are minor distortions of the skin. He looks maybe a little sadder and more thoughtful as the time passes by. But when you take picture, he stops changing, and this is an obscenity to us." Now Baker slipped the bag from the bundle of photographs and began to flip through them, a sour taste at the back of his throat. There were perhaps thirty photos altogether. He had taken pictures of the men and the damaged communications shed and the trees with the bodies lying beneath. Here was DeFillips on the ground. There was a smear of dirt on his face. His eyes were half-open, as if peering out sardonically from beneath the lids. The next photo was of James Lifton, his forehead a bloody wreck. The light was bad and the colors dull like Polaroids always were, flesh tones overexposed until they resembled the inner rind of an orange, everything slightly out of focus. The next photo. The next. And the next. Baker looked at each picture for a long time, as if expecting the faces to move, the men to rise and walk again. But he knew that Quassapelagh had been right. It was an obscenity. * * * "You know, Doyle's right about one thing," Mulder said. "The army wouldn't take over Suriname until they were assured of economic self-sufficiency. Whenever the military seized power in the past, they were forced back to democracy within a few years because the economy couldn't handle the change. They need money from the Netherlands. If they return to military rule, Dutch aid will cease and they'll be left to their own devices. The whole process is doomed from the start, unless they find some way of supporting themselves." He and Scully stood in the museum on the first floor. This level was partitioned into many galleries, many rooms, a pasteboard labyrinth in which every chamber had its own theme, its own parceled bit of Surinamese history: the Hall of Agriculture, the Hall of Science, the Hall of Colonialism. This was the Hall of Primitives. The walls were hung with feathers, blowguns, woven hammocks. The mannequin of a Waiwai tribesman stood near the entrance, wilting in the heat. Behind a red velvet rope was a Tirio killing box -- a bamboo enclosure the size of a telephone booth in which a hunter could await the approach of a jaguar. There was a slit in the door for the arrow. Mulder opened the door, looked inside. The killing box was empty except for a crumpled candy wrapper written in Hindi. The interior smelled of hay and dry rot. "So do you buy Doyle's theory?" Scully asked. "That Aquino killed these men to get his hands on whatever they were doing in the rain forest?" "No," said Mulder. "I don't think anything human was responsible for what happened there." Mulder had his hands on the red velvet rope, on the heavy metal stand, hooking and unhooking it as he spoke. The brass clip made a clicking sound in the silence. Around them, the room was deserted. "So what are you thinking?" she said. "I'm thinking about the Andes glow." Scully remembered Mulder sitting in the basement yesterday morning, going through a stack of photos, a fuzzy finger of luminescence blazing up through the middle of each: now blue, now yellow, now red, like the afterimage from a burst of sunlight, towering high above the hills or treetops. "It isn't an isolated phenomenon," he said now. "There have been at least twenty authenticated sightings in South America since 1931. It's a diffuse electrical discharge phenomenon, a pillar of light rising from the mountaintops -- like the Brown Mountain lights." Scully shuddered at the memory. "But there were no mountains in this case." "It doesn't matter. This is an atmospheric force." "I'm afraid to ask what causes it." "Promise you won't laugh?" "No." But Mulder's eyes had that teasing gleam they got whenever he was about to venture anything particularly bizarre; Scully sensed that something good was coming. "Doyle gave me the idea," Mulder said. "He mentioned that the Surinamese had been keeping the plantation under satellite surveillance." Doyle was beginning to sound more paranoid than Mulder himself. "Do you believe him?" asked Scully. "Not really. But it got me to thinking. In all likelihood, any such satellites would have been launched from French Guiana. Look." From his back pocket Mulder produced a rumpled map, unfolding it and spreading it across the bench behind them. He jabbed it with his finger. "The European Space Agency has maintained a launching station at Kourou for years, right across the border from Suriname. It's a standard rule of thumb. When you want to build a satellite tracking system, you put it as close to the equator as possible." He straightened up and turned to Scully, still with that mad gleam in his eye. "So?" he said, waiting for her response. Scully held out her hands. "So...what?" "The Andes glow and similar discharge phenomena are often associated with sightings of unidentified flying objects," Mulder said patiently. "I think the rain forest outside of Paramaribo is a major hotbed of alien activity." "You think that aliens are monitoring satellite launchings in Kourou?" Scully asked, incredulous. "No," Mulder said. "I think that the aliens are launching satellites of their own." She looked at him. He was grinning but serious. For some reason she thought of Jenny Haniver. He and Haniver had gone through Quantico together, first as rivals and then as friends -- and nothing more, he had assured her, but she had her doubts. Had they spent long afternoons together over cups of coffee? Had Mulder dangled these strange theories before Haniver's eyes? If so, how had Haniver responded? Scully tried to put herself back in time, tried to imagine a younger, more innocent Fox Mulder, perhaps with the beginnings of a mustache curling nervously on his upper lip, hashing out Kierkegaard or Ted Bundy over a steaming cappuccino, and found that she couldn't.... But then Mulder seemed to go crazy. One moment he was standing there calmly, waiting for her reply, and then he was grabbing her by the arm and pushing her by the small of the back towards the killing box. Scully was too surprised to protest or struggle, and before she knew it Mulder had unhooked the red velvet rope and flung open the killing box door and shoved her inside. Then he squeezed in after her and closed the door behind them. Inside it was dark and musty and cramped -- the box had been designed to hold one person at a time, and she and Mulder were uncomfortably close. The bamboo dug into her back. Scully hissed: "Mulder, what the hell -- " Mulder clapped a hand over her mouth. In the darkness, Scully's eyes went wide. For a second she thought that he was going to do something sexual and her mind raced, trying desperately to find a dignified way out of this situation. Then she heard the voices. Mulder was nodding his head toward the arrow-slit in the bamboo door. Nudging her toward it. The slit was at her eye level. The voices. Scully heard who was speaking. In a flash, she understood. She managed to turn halfway around inside the box, scraping her arm painfully in the process, until she was in a position to look outside. The arrow-slit was rectangular and trimmed with some kind of animal fur. Looking out was like staring through a camera viewfinder. At first she didn't see anyone. Then Neil Kovac stepped into her field of vision. She had met him at the airstrip that morning, and recognized him even though his back was turned. He was standing next to the mannequin at the other end of the room, speaking in his cold, formal tone to a man whom Scully had never seen before. He was young, Semitic, with a small dark beard. The two men were arguing. Scully listened. * * * "We must look at this situation with some degree of objectivity," Kovac said. "Even if Aquino grants us free passage into the rain forest, this does not mean he has lost interest in what we are doing." Inside the killing box, Scully felt the pressure of Mulder's chest on her back as he leaned forward, trying to get a better look at the two men. Finally he rested his chin on her shoulder and they peered through the arrow-slit together, breathing slowly, regularly. Though the faint perfume of mold and dried grass came another odor, one that Scully immediately recognized. It was her partner's curiosity. It wafted up from his body, as palpable as sweat. Kovac came closer to the box, still talking. "Once we leave, I believe that Aquino will follow us in three or four days' time. When this comes to pass, we must be prepared to conceal our work." "No." The other man followed Kovac across the room. A matchstick dangled from the corner of his mouth. "Fuck this. I say we fuck Aquino, fuck this whole deal. We've spent too much time -- " "Do not curse me, Doyle." "And fuck you too, all right?" Doyle said. "Listen, you wouldn't be here if it weren't for me. Remember that. You're a fucking bureaucrat, Kovac -- you don't know anything about your own processes. There's major technology at stake. We've already invested -- " "Spare me your bullshit." Kovac lowered his voice to a fierce whisper. Scully strained to hear him. "I was working in this jungle before you could cross the street by yourself. There are issues here of which you have no knowledge." The two men were less than six feet away from the killing box. Scully could see a vein pulsing its way up Doyle's forehead like a larva. "I know enough, goddammit," Doyle said. "I know the DOE has poured more than two hundred million dollars into this project so far. They're gonna want results." "We have given them results." "We've given them shit, Kovac. I can be on the phone in five minutes. I can tell them you want to torch the place. What do you think they'll say to that?" "They trust my judgment. If we must burn the plantation to keep it out of Aquino's hands, so be it. We can begin again somewhere else." "We've been here for two years. By the time we get BFDP up to speed again, someone will have busted a cap in our ass, maybe the Brazilians, or the Costa Ricans, it doesn't matter -- but someone will have a viable feedstock system within two years." Doyle's matchstick snapped in two. He spat out the pieces, flicked the rest of it away. "And I guarantee it won't be us." Scully was ransacking her memory for these terms -- BFDP, feedstock -- when her eyes crossed. Something yellow and glittering had appeared less than an inch from her face. It was a spider. She stiffened. It was the size of her thumb and was lowering itself from the roof of the box on a length of white silk. She could see each of its spindly legs etched against the light. She hadn't thought about the bugs. The killing box was made of bamboo and vines and dried grasses and it probably harbored insects by the hundreds. Outside, the conversation continued. "That would be an expensive loss for you, wouldn't it? How much money have you invested in feedstock since the project began?" Doyle's voice: "That's none of your fucking business." "On the contrary. Are you afraid for your investment? You stand to lose just as much if our plantation falls to the Surinamese. It might have been burned for all the good it will do you then. Worse, because Suriname will have the feedstock and the process will be lost." Now the spider was almost touching her nose. She prayed desperately that it wouldn't decide to disembark on her face. But it did. Scully couldn't move her arms, couldn't do anything but hold herself like a statue, the sweat pouring down, as the spider brushed against her cheek. She couldn't see it anymore but she could feel the tickling. It crawled along her jawline. Jesus Christ. "That's why we need to bring in the fucking cavalry," Doyle said. "Ferdinand Aquino killed these men. If we can prove he did it, we can indict that son of a bitch and keep him away from BFDP." "Then prove he did it," Kovac said. "That's the FBI's job." "Then let them do it. They are the professionals. We have five days, a week at most. After that, we must be prepared to destroy everything we have worked to accomplish." The spider was on her chin. If it crawled down her shirt she would scream and claw open the door and fall in a heap on the ground. Very professional. But Kovac's voice was growing fainter. "You don't own anything," he said, "until you can throw it away. When the Lycians were about to be conquered by Persia, they herded their wives and children and slaves into the citadel and burned it to the ground. They died fighting. The sacrifice I ask of you is puny in comparison...." His words faded away until they were lost. Scully ventured a look outside. The men were gone, and the Hall of Primitives was empty again. In an instant they were outside. Scully had flicked the spider away from her chin and was brushing her T-shirt and jeans with both hands to dislodge any unseen occupants when Mulder took her by the arm. His face was flushed, his hair sticking up in the back. "We need to follow them." "What?" "Something's happening. C'mon, Scully, live a little." He grinned and was off. Scully stood there for a moment, trying to think of an adequate comeback. In the end, she muttered something under her breath and followed him, brushing imaginary cobwebs from her hair. Mulder stood at the entrance to the Hall of Primitives, peering around the corner. "I think they're about to split up," he said without looking around. "I'll follow Doyle. Keep an eye on Kovac. He just walked into the Hall of Agriculture." They parted company. Her heart was beating faster than she liked. She strode through the Hall of Colonialism, glancing at neither the fragrant model of a three-masted ship to her left or the framed documents of conquest to her right. The museum was almost empty. Scully got to the far wall, flattened herself against it and leaned forward just far enough to look into the next room. Kovac was there. He went past the iron plows and photographs of terrace farming and through the next doorway, his steps purposeful and quick. Scully counted to three and followed. As an afterthought, she reached into her pocket and switched her cell phone to silent mode. The next room was a corridor with two stairwells and an elevator. Scully got there in time to see the elevator doors slide shut. She looked up at the old-fashioned dial, saw the arrow tremble and begin to move -- Kovac was going up. She dashed to the stairwell, flung open the door, took the steps two at a time. There were five floors to choose from. Instinct told her that he was headed for the top. Scully was in good shape and was only slightly out of breath when she emerged at her destination. She opened the door a crack, looked out. Saw a hallway of spotless hospital white. Kovac was already halfway down the corridor, his boots clicking against the tiles as he headed toward a red door at the far end of the hall. When he finally reached it, he stood there for a full minute, hesitating, his wiry, callused hands clasped behind his back. Finally Kovac knocked. A few seconds later, the door swung open, and he went inside, shutting the door behind him. Scully stepped into the hallway. She was about to examine the door more closely -- it was unmarked, and there was no knob on the outside -- when her cell phone vibrated warmly against her hip. She answered it. It was Isaac Doyle. * * * Ferdinand Aquino allowed Kovac to talk for a long time, and when he had finished, the two men sat in silence. It five o'clock, and the sun no longer shone through the skylight like a net of hammered gold; it hung above the horizon, red and ripe, leaving the office heavy in with shadow. The Dutchman took a cigar from the humidor on his desk but did not touch a match to it yet. He produced a small penknife, cut off the end with one careful slice. The blade of the knife was made from sharpened crystal. Aquino was a fastidious smoker, and he disliked the taste that steel left behind. "So what price do you expect me to pay for this knowledge?" he asked when he was done. Kovac leaned back into the softness of his chair, his legs crossed. "I think you already know." The blue spurt of a match. "You will be granted passage into the jungle," Aquino said, toasting the end of his cigar. "I want more than that. First, a guarantee that you will not come charging after us for five days. Second, some information." Kovac straightened up. "I have been honest with you," he said. "In many ways I have been honest beyond my own best interests. Now I demand some honesty in return." "I did not kill your men, if that is what you want to know," Aquino said flatly. Kovac ignored the denial. "If you did," he said, "I bear you no ill will. I only want to know how it was done." "I did not do it." A long pause. "There is something else, then." "Yes." Aquino opened one of the smallest drawers in his great desk, removed a flat box the size of a sardine can. He slid it across the polished wooden surface. Kovac took the box without looking inside. Pocketed it. It made a small bulge in the front of his vest. "I will give you another thing," said Aquino after a moment. "Something for which you did not ask." He parceled out his words with care. "If I suspected someone of killing twelve of my countrymen, even if they were men for whom I held no love, I would do no business with him. Perhaps I would kill him where he stood." He hesitated. "This arrangement of ours tells me that you serve something other than your homeland. My advice is to weigh your allegiance carefully." In the dim evening light, Kovac's face looked more like granite than ever. "Is that all?" he asked. "Yes." "In that case," Kovac said, rising, "I want to see Baker." * * * "They're called the trees of heaven," Doyle said. "Imagine it. Imagine that you could plant a tree that yielded gallon after gallon of high-quality diesel fuel, natural oil that could be poured directly into an engine, running more smoothly than refined gasoline. Then imagine planting thousands of these trees. Hundreds of thousands. Millions. And leasing the technology to the nearest developing nation." "Start over," said Haniver. They stood in the basement of Fort Gambaro. Empty cages stretched on either side like the husks of a previous life, the loosened skins and chrysalides of some unimaginable metamorphosis. Scully heard water rushing through the pipes above their heads. The three FBI agents faced Doyle, the harsh shadows of chicken wire criss-crossing the floor between them. Doyle ran both hands through his hair. "I've already explained this, for chrissake. I bioengineered the trees myself. I was working at Oak Ridge at the time but I got hired by the DOE when they saw the results I was getting. No one had ever thought of it -- although it's so obvious in retrospect. Copal oil is naturally rich in hydrocarbons. All I did was raise the yield. I had something big, I knew it, even before Kovac took the trees and cloned them and raised them in bulk to see if they were feasible as a commercial energy source." "Diesel fuel. You were processing these trees as sources of diesel fuel?" asked Mulder. After all the buildup, all the doubletalk, this solution seemed absurd. "You'd better fucking believe it," Doyle said. "The DOE was investigating the potential of copal oil as an alternative energy source. They've been doing this for years. It's called the Biofuel Feedstock Development Program -- " Scully made the connection. "BFDP." "That's right." "Is biofuel really such a hot item?" "Let me put it this way. This plantation may be located in Suriname, but our real target is Brazil. 150 million people. Half the land area of South America. But their fossil fuel reserves aren't worth shit. Their oil is being drained drop by drop and their coal is mostly sulfur and ash. Right now they're desperate for alternatives -- which is where we come in. If we can supply Brazil with a working source of energy before anyone else, it'll be a sweet deal for all concerned." "So you bought a hundred acres of savannah in Suriname, telling the government that you were harvesting the copal oil to manufacture cosmetics," Scully said. "Progress was good, until -- " " -- until all hell broke loose." "Fine," said Mulder. "But why lie to us? I can understand why you might want to feed the Surinamese a load of bullshit, assuming that you were going to cheat them out of their one real chance at economic self-sufficiency. But why give us the same cover story?" "We needed plausible deniability. That's the phrase you federal spooks like to use, right? Plausible deniability. We knew that you and Kovac were going to face Aquino together, so we fed you the same line we gave the general." "But we're here to investigate," Haniver said. "If you lie to us -- " "Investigate?" Doyle snorted laughter. "Let me tell you about our priorities. My first concern is making sure this plantation doesn't go belly-up like a fucking porpoise. If we find out who killed those guys in the jungle, terrific. If we have to settle for a segment on 'Unsolved Mysteries,' then so be it. But if the plantation goes down, everybody loses." "Have it your way," Haniver said. But there was a cold edge to her voice. For a moment her good-natured demeanor peeled away. "But if we find out you've lied about anything else, we're hitting you with obstruction of justice. We're hitting you hard. Because you aren't the only one with priorities." "I came clean." "You came clean because you couldn't trust Kovac anymore," Mulder said. "I know what's going on. If Kovac had his way, you'd torch the plantation and start again somewhere else. Given what happened there, that's probably a good idea. But you can't let him do that, because you've invested your own money in the project -- " "How the fuck did you know that?" Mulder grinned. "I'm a federal spook." "Jesus." Doyle turned away, shaking his head. "You act like I'm the only one who ever twisted the truth to save his own ass. Get used to it. You're standing in a part of the world founded on convenient fabrication. What do you think colonialism is all about, anyway? That's the way things work here. Whenever the government of Suriname changes hands, it's always in a bloodless coup. They don't have the guts to fight a real war. Deceit is power. Except maybe in this room." "This room?" Scully asked, not sure where this monologue was headed. "Yeah. Look around you." The cages. The partitions. It was a labyrinth of wire and shadow, a place where unpersons were brought, desaparecidos shackled to the walls to await interrogation. An image came to Scully, a vision of herself here, not among the prisoners but among the guards, truncheon in hand, her boots shiny and black. Or Haniver. Haniver with her interstate diamond thief chained to the ceiling, asking questions, hanging the woman from her regal gray scarf.... "You know what this is?" Doyle asked, gesturing to the rows of shattered cells around them. "This is the museum of clear ideas. You step outside this room and it's all lies, man, it's all fucking lies. The Dutch colonists made a landfall and took the jungle from the Indians piece by piece, and then the French stole it from the Dutch, and the English from the French -- because you can't make honest war in the rain forest. There's nowhere to fight. It's all camouflage, all mimicry. You sneak around and break treaties and never show anyone your true face. Except here." Doyle kicked one of the cages. It rattled beneath the blow. "Here you had prisoner and torturer eye to fucking eye. They didn't pretend to be anything they weren't. You want honesty, you strap someone to a table, bring out the electrical prod. Outside this room there's nothing but suspicion, or imagination." It was time to go. They went back upstairs, leaving the cages behind. Scully felt the beginnings of a headache gathering inside her skull. She thought about the forest that was waiting outside. The mad multiplication of growth, trees crowding trees, vines and funguses weaving together until the entire jungle might be one enormous organism.... They were on the first floor again. The museum, the Hall of Primitives. Kovac was approaching them. His eyes seemed to narrow at the sight of Doyle with the three FBI agents -- perhaps a trace of suspicion crawled across his craggy face -- but the shadow was gone as quickly as it appeared. He smiled. Scully sensed that something big was on the way. "I have good news," Kovac said. * * * The window overlooked the jungle. Mulder lifted the blind and gazed out at that endless immensity, the ranks of trees stretching silent and impassive to the edge of the world. Beyond the glass and brick of Fort Gambaro lurked something primitive, unknowable, a forest that constantly rebuilt itself into ever more enormous and mysterious shapes. A great mottled hawk hung motionless in the sky. The clouds above were pregnant with rain. Mulder turned back. The room was empty except for a table and two chairs. Nick Baker sat there. Baker was a large man, bearded and muscular, his eyes unnaturally sharp and watchful. His hands were folded on the tabletop. He was waiting. "Can I get you a glass of water?" Mulder asked. "We may be here for a while." "I'm all right." Baker's voice was soft. Mulder sat down across from Baker. "In that case, the first thing I'll need to do is....Hold on." A battery-operated tape recorder sat on the table between them. Mulder popped a tape inside, pressed a button. He leaned down to speak into the microphone: "This is Special Agent Fox Mulder deposing Nicholas Baker in Paramaribo, Suriname on the date stamped above, sworn and attested." He rewound the cassette, played it to make sure it was recording. "Mr. Baker, I -- " "I'd like to see your badge," said Baker, not taking his eyes from Mulder's face. Without expression, Mulder dug the ID from his pocket and handed it over. Baker examined the Bureau seal, the laminated photograph. "You know, I have no idea what an FBI badge is supposed to look like," he commented. "But you think this may be a fake." "If I were Aquino, this would be the first thing I'd try. Bring in some Dutchman whose accent wasn't too bad, give him a tape recorder and a fake ID and have him claim to be an FBI agent who was here to take my testimony." "You don't believe I'm an American?" "Prove it to me." "I saw the Orioles play the White Sox three days before I left Washington," Mulder said without hesitation. "Ripken singled in the bottom of the ninth to drive in Belle for a 7-6 win. It put Baltimore five games back in the AL east." "I don't follow baseball nowadays," said Baker. "I suppose you wouldn't." Mulder fiddled with the tape recorder. "You know, when they suspected someone of being a German double agent during World War II they would administer a cultural literacy test. Questions only an all-American boy would be able to answer. Like who won the World Series in 1937; or the name of Mickey Mouse's girlfriend." Baker smiled wanly and asked to see Mulder's wallet. The collection of debris among the credit cards and Virginia driver's license -- receipts, ticket stubs and a few hard pods he recognized as sunflower seeds -- was convincing enough for him. "Fine," he said, handing back the billfold. "Let's get started." "First I'll need to ask you some questions about your physical condition," said Mulder, repocketing his wallet. "You were in Surinamese custody for almost forty-eight hours. You were treated humanely?" "Yes." "No cuts or bruises? Nothing we might want to photograph?" "No." "All right." The preliminaries complete, Mulder reach down and switched off the tape recorder. "Before we get to what happened in the jungle, there's something I should clarify," the FBI agent said. "I don't like this arrangement any more than you do. This deal with the tape and the deposition makes it look like I'm collecting evidence to send to some grand jury or smoke-filled room back in Washington, I know, but that isn't the case. I pick my own assignments, and I'm only here because I'm interested and concerned. Understood?" "Understood," said Baker. "Good." From his briefcase Mulder pulled a battered legal pad, flipped to the middle. He uncapped a felt-tip marker and switched the tape recorder on again. "Let's start at the beginning. You're an employee of the Department of Energy?" "I'm a consultant," said Baker. "I've been on the payroll for two years now, but I wouldn't consider myself an employee -- I've yet to see the inside of a federal building." "Why were you hired?" "Mostly because I knew the jungle well, and because I spoke Tirio and Sranan Tongo. I'm an ethnobotanist," Baker explained. "For the past ten years I've been working with native peoples, researching their traditional herbal medicines, trying to record this information before it disappears." "You're a conservationist." "You might say that." "But you were working with the DOE on a project that could have meant the mass exploitation of the Amazon rain forest," Mulder said. "Didn't you have some doubts about what you were doing?" Baker looked down. For some reason his eye was drawn to the tape recorder. He could see the cassette through the transparent plastic window, the spindles turning spools of filament. It was a whirlpool, a wheel. He had a sudden vision of Indians winding rope around a gigantic winch, dragging a battleship up the side of a mountain. "I didn't think their research would amount to anything," he said, clearing his throat. "The plantation did no damage to the surrounding hylaea. We planted the trees in an area that had been naturally cleared of cover. This wasn't a slash and burn operation." "It doesn't matter. I'm not trying to make a point." Mulder doodled on his legal pad without looking down, shapeless whorls and circles emerging from beneath his pen. "You were serving as a consultant for the DOE," he said. "You'd been working on the project for almost two years. But you weren't at the plantation when everyone died." "No, I wasn't." "Where were you?" "I was several miles downriver at the time." "Why?" "We'd been suffering from a minor insect infestation. Butterflies were on the copal trees, laying their eggs there, and the caterpillars were eating the leaves. The pesticides seemed to be working, but when I radioed Doyle about it, he was pretty pissed off. I was supposed to fly back to the city and bring a few sample chrysalides so we could figure out how to control the bugs in the long run." "So you were on your way to Paramaribo." "Right. The way it works," Baker said, "is that you have to take a raft up the river for thirty miles or so. At that point, there's an abandoned Tirio village with an old airstrip, about a hundred miles from the city. You need to charter a plane to pick you up from there." "Why was the plantation founded so far off the beaten path?" asked Mulder. "There were a number of factors. The first site we tried had a layer of gravel just beneath the surface. The roots couldn't penetrate. So we were forced to move the entire operation thirty miles upstream." "Okay. So you were at this abandoned village when you saw the Andes glow, the light above the treetops. And you decided to return to the plantation to investigate." Mulder turned to the front of his legal pad, checking a detail. "This is what you told the pilot, by the way, the one who flew you back to the city with the bodies -- he confirms that you spoke to him about an unusual glow." "Yes," said Baker, although in truth he remembered nothing about his flight back to Paramaribo beyond the faint odor of decay and his own numb horror. He felt something like that now. Even the smell seemed to have returned. It came back to him in a rush, the stink, the heaviness of death in his arms, the slipperiness of the soil. The kernel of darkness waiting to sprout. Baker sighed, looked at Mulder, waited for the question that would unlock the rest. "And what did you find at the plantation?" Mulder asked. * * * It was May 22, near the end of the rainy season. Even from two hundred yards away Baker could sense that something was wrong. Between the BFDP facility and the surrounding forest stood a high chain-link fence topped with barbed wire; there was a chained gate, a padlock. He could see the light glinting off the dull steel. The rain was coming down hard; he was wearing a cagoule, a rain jacket that hugged his knees like a penitent's cloak. For ordinary hiking, the cagoule was too goddamned hot. By the time he got to the gate, he was sweating rivers. He didn't see the bodies until he was almost close enough to touch them. The rain had buried them face-down in the mud. He unlocked the gate and pulled the chain away, the pulse pounding in his forehead, unable to look away from the three lumps on the ground. All the spit in his mouth had dried up. His tongue felt like a piece of leather. Baker staggered over to the corpses -- his mind gone, his body moving like a shambling automaton, a golem -- and turned one of them over. The face was caked with dirt. He wiped it away. It was Albert DeFillips. The sand had left a pattern on his forehead. Baker screamed. He turned over the next corpse. Daniel Kwon. Alongside him lay John Fuller. His mouth was filled with black sputum. They had been running for the gate when they died and their legs had kept running even after they hit the ground, spasming and kicking up the soil and digging into the dust. Baker was sick. He vomited over them, oh Jesus, he vomited right on Fuller's shoes. It felt like his heart and stomach were going to come up with the puke. For a long time he thought that he was dying, that he'd caught whatever had killed these men. He prayed for something, didn't know what, felt only an incoherent yammer bubble up from his soul. Somehow he was on his feet and shouting. Calling names. But nothing answered him except the thundering downpour, the sound of water coursing across millions of leaves and exploding into droplets on the earth. He walked down the gravel path. Twenty yards down he found David Harris. The shock was beginning to wear away. When he stumbled across Jonathan Kinski -- staring up at the flat iron sky, his eye sockets brimming with water -- Baker didn't even pause. He stepped over the body and shut his eyes with grim certainty: he was dead or dreaming or insane. Dimly Baker felt hands tearing at his hair. They were his hands. At the southernmost end of the plantation lay six cinderblock buildings with roofs of corrugated metal. Three or four bodies were scattered on the ground, like dolls on a playroom floor. There is a limit to the amount of horror that the human brain can experience and still survive. After a certain point, the emotive functions shut themselves off. Baker kept waiting for that internal click, that detachment, but it never came. He knew that this march would never end. He peeled his cagoule off and left it on the ground, hoping in some dim way that the rain would obliterate him. He was at the point where the rows of copal trees began. The trunks were slim and evenly spaced so he had no trouble looking between them and seeing two more corpses lying in the orchard, sheltered somewhat by the branches. He screamed again because a voice in the back of his mind had been making a tally -- two bodies here, three at the gate, four at the cinderblock compound, Harris, Kinski meant that there was one more, oh God, there was one more -- "Jesus," he whispered. A moment ago, he had seen something. It had passed unnoticed beneath the haze of his consciousness but now it resurfaced and sent fear rocketing into his heart. He turned back to the cinderblock buildings. He was soaked. It felt like the skin of his torso was sloughing off. Five of the buildings were intact. The sixth was in ruins. The walls had caved in and the roof had collapsed, sagging impotently, sluicing the rain down to the ground. It was the communications booth. It had been rammed repeatedly until the blocks had crumbled and splintered like broken earthenware. Baker's shoes crunched the concrete as he stepped beneath the overhang. The radio had been demolished. There were leaves on the ground. James Lifton lay across the lacerated threshold, his head smashed like a melon, the water pouring across his face and filling the depression in his skull. Lifton was the last one. They were all dead. Everyone in the plantation was dead. Baker sat down. After a while, the storm stopped and the sun came out again. The sun had been blazing for almost fifteen minutes before he began to think clearly. He was alone in the forest without any means of communication, surrounded by bodies that would begin to decay in the heat very soon. His eyes swam at the thought of the task ahead of him and he sensed that he was about to faint. He bit the heel of his hand hard enough to draw blood. That seemed to help. A moment later he got up and went to work. There was a Polaroid camera in the lab, and some orange plastic flags the researchers used to tag the trees. Baker took picture after picture and stuffed them into his pockets before they had a chance to develop; then he marked the spots where the men had fallen and took the dead into his arms and carried them one by one to the riverside. He was a strong man, but near the end his arms trembled. The bodies had already gone stiff. He wrapped them in plastic and laid them into the rafts like vikings, but instead of setting the boats afire he chained them together and set off down the river. He was Charon. His eyes burned as if they were ringed with flame. * * * Baker watched in silence as Mulder flipped through the thick stack of photographs. The last picture was of Lifton, his ruined face soft and bloated from the water. It was strange how the act of documenting the bodies seemed to kill each victim a second time. Death always meant humiliation, no matter what form it took. "You understand why I need to go back," he said when Mulder was done. Mulder set the photos down. "I don't think that's such a good idea." "But you're going into the jungle. You wouldn't be here unless you were planning some kind of expedition with Kovac and Doyle and the others. Tell me." "We're leaving tomorrow," said Mulder. "But I don't think you have any obligation to come along." "No. Listen to me." Baker's voice was filled with urgency but it was tired, too, tired and broken from the horrors he had survived: "Twelve men died at that plantation. They were struck down by something I can't understand or explain. The same thing could happen if you follow in their footsteps." "I'm well aware of the danger." "Let me ask you a question. Are you sure of your own ability? When you're in the rain forest there's nothing between you and death except your own strength and intelligence. Do you have perfect faith in these things?" "I don't think anyone is capable of perfect faith. Questions like that tend to degenerate into Jedi master bullshit." Mulder shook his head. "But if I weren't at least somewhat confident in my own ability, I wouldn't do some of the things I do." "Then you're in a better position than I am. You've got no reason to be afraid. There's danger, yeah, but you can face it on your own terms -- you can depend on yourself. If you walk into danger on your own two feet you can trust them to bring you out again." Baker paused. "But I have every reason to be afraid. If you leave me behind, I'll understand the danger and I won't be able to do a damn thing about it. It's the waiting I can't stand." He clasped his hands together. "A few years ago I was living with the Arawaks, trying to learn their recipe for arrow poison. They took me hunting. When we were a few miles from the village, one of the men I was with accidentally nicked himself with an arrow. A scratch, nothing more. But he knew that the curare was in his system. He dropped his bow and stretched himself out on the ground, very calmly, and said good-bye to us. Then he died, and there was nothing I could do." Baker looked up. "It's a bitch to be the survivor." "I know." "Then take me with you. I have no hidden agenda. If you think that Kovac or Doyle have anything in mind except their own concerns, you're dead wrong. They're good men, but they're more interested in protecting their investment than anything else. Kovac cut some kind of a deal with Aquino to set me free and grant him access to the rain forest. I'm sure of it." Mulder switched off the tape recorder. "What kind of a deal?" "I don't know. But when a disaster like this takes place, the wheels start rolling before the bodies have even cooled. More than one deal was made over the last two days, and not all of them will work to your benefit. Ultimately, I'm the only one you can trust." "Why's that?" "Because for the last two days," Baker said, "I've been in quarantine." * * * The video image was small and grainy, and after a while Haniver felt her eyes going out of focus. She sat in the bathroom on the sixth floor of Fort Gambaro, the door locked and bolted behind her. The bathroom window was small, set close to the ceiling, with a crank that swung the frosted glass away from the side of the building: she had stood on the toilet to clip the antenna to the windowsill, running the wire down to the transmitter itself. She placed the transmitter on the porcelain lid of the toilet tank and sat backwards on the commode to face it, her thighs almost hugging the sculpted base. It was a small gray box with a keyboard, a microphone and a square LCD screen. On the screen was the faint image of a man. "We recently heard from Kovac." The man's image was refreshed once every second. It was like looking at a succession of still photographs. As he took the cigarettes from his inside pocket and stabbed one into his mouth, his movements were jerky, erratic. "It appears that he has been making substantial progress, which is more than I can say for you." The quick spark of a lighter. "I need time," said Haniver. "I can't compete with Kovac in the city. Once we enter the jungle -- " Her correspondent took a delicate drag of smoke: that is, she saw the cigarette frozen midway to his lips, then a snapshot of the inhalation, then a wreath of pixellated smoke encircling his head. "Kovac has obtained satellite photos of the plantation at the time of the accident, did you know that?" he asked. "He has made arrangements to send them to us in Washington." She inhaled sharply. "I didn't know." A sour smile creased the man's wrinkled face. "I would advise you to find these photos and examine them yourself. That is, of course," he added, voice amused, "if you want to stay in the game." Haniver fumed silently. She knew when she was being toyed with, when she was being strung along for someone else's advantage. She knew that whatever new information she fed them would be relayed to Kovac immediately, if only to keep them both bitter and suspicious and ever more eager for the prize. But it wasn't her place to complain. When you lived in the museum of clear ideas, you got used to the company you kept. "I'll find the photographs, Mr. Spender," Haniver said. Her hands gripped the edge of the toilet tank. The porcelain was feverish to the touch. "Believe me, I will...." * * * Together at last. The six members of the BFDP expedition team sat around a conference table on the topmost floor of Fort Gambaro. The pitted wooden tabletop was covered with a thick topsoil of topographical maps, sketches and aerial photographs of the plantation, itineraries, equipment lists, folders, transcripts. Another inch or two and it would go to mulch, Haniver thought. She wondered where Kovac had hidden the satellite photos, and how he was planning to transport them back to the States. Kovac was not the sort of man to trust the Surinamese postal service, she thought, especially if he had received the photos from Aquino in some illegal transaction. The problem nagged at her, made it difficult to focus on the task at hand. Her mind kept wandering. "I don't think we're dealing with an organic pathogen," Scully was saying, the autopsy results spread before her. "These men were running from something, something they could see or feel or taste. Judging from the condition in which the victims were found, I'm guessing that it was some kind of nerve agent. We're sending samples back to the States for toxicology, but the lethal dose may be too low for us to find anything concrete. Haniver?" It took a moment before Haniver realized that she was being prompted. Eventually she agreed. "We're prescribing pyridostigmine and diazepam tablets for all of us, starting tomorrow. They'll help shield the brain from any immediate dihabilitation. It isn't complete protection, but it should increase the treatable interval by a minute or two." "But it's a messy death," said Scully. "Vomiting, involuntary defecation. The victims were in a lot of pain when they died." At some point in the evening, someone had produced a bottle of tequila. The thought of the next day's labors was enough to dissuade most of them from drinking, but Mulder had a shot in his hand, apparently forgotten, and Doyle was calmly working his way towards inebriation. Currently the geneticist was slumped across the table, gazing blearily at the bottle. "Fuck." "Have we got the necessary protective gear?" Baker asked. "I'm talking about space suits, disinfection rigs, biohazard detectors -- " Kovac nodded. "Most of our equipment has been shipped into the rain forest already. When we arrive at the Tirio village tomorrow morning, the rafts and biosuits will be there. Under ordinary circumstances, we would then take the river directly to the plantation -- " "But not tomorrow," Mulder said. "Tomorrow we're treating this as a biochemical disaster area. Once we're half a mile downstream, Scully and Haniver will disembark and sweep the buildings. If the place is clean, we'll proceed from there." Mulder finally seemed to notice the glass in his hand, swallowing the alcohol at a gulp. "Jesus," he said, coughing and clutching his throat. Haniver ignored him. "I want the bodies shipped to the CDC in Atlanta for further testing," she said to Kovac. "Arrangements have already been made. The exception is Albert DeFillips; he will be sent to Washington instead. His estate has demanded an independent autopsy." "I'm not sure I approve of that," Scully said. "I do not blame you," replied Kovac. "But we have twelve corpses and twelve potential wrongful-death lawsuits on our hands. I have no choice but to cooperate with these families." Doyle straightened up suddenly. "You are absolutely right. It's a sacrifice that needs to be made. Like Joan of Arc, or those fucking Greeks." He tried to pour himself another shot and missed by several inches. "What were they called? The ones, you know, who locked their wives in the citadel and set the fucking place on fire. What did you say they were called?" He was very drunk by now. "The Lycians." There was perhaps the trace of a smile on Kovac's face. "They were called the Lycians. Herodotus, Book I. They bound themselves by terrible oaths and were slaughtered by the Persians." And that was all it took. Haniver felt a twinge of revelation, as simple and sweet as the act of plucking a lemon from a tree: and like that, she knew where Kovac had hidden the photographs. Her mind buzzed with excitement but she fixed her eyes on the slush of papers scattered across the table, not looking at Kovac or anyone else, desperate not to betray herself. She needed to get downstairs. The thought hammered itself into her skull again and again. She needed to get downstairs. She counted to twenty and rose from her chair. "Excuse me," she said, leaving the table. There were sleeping bags and foam pads lying on the floor around them: they would be spending the night here. Her orange knapsack was tucked away beneath a pile of other equipment. Her knife was inside the front pocket. She would need the knife. She picked up her knapsack, headed for the door. "Where are you going?" Mulder asked, turning halfway around. "To the bathroom," Haniver said, and then she was out. * * * Into the hallway, glancing quickly from side to side. The fort was dark and apparently deserted but there were sounds filtering up from the lower floors, voices and the distant clank of moving objects. A ghostly murmur of activity beneath her feet. She hoisted the knapsack onto her shoulders and headed off. Between the fourth and fifth floor Haniver ran into a couple of Surinamese soldiers. She heard them coming up the stairs and ducked out of the stairwell, into the hallway, moving on until she was around the corner. Then she peeked into the corridor. The two soldiers stood less than thirty feet away, dark-skinned, their short-sleeved uniforms the color of the desert. Rifles slung across their shoulders. They spoke softly in Dutch. One of them laughed, showing his bad teeth. She didn't know what the soldiers would do if they found her. Probably nothing. But something about the situation bothered her deeply. Haniver waited until the soldiers had turned and gone down the hall, their boots clicking softly in the darkness. Then she crept back into the stairwell, careful not to make any noise as she descended. There was light on the third floor. Haniver hesitated. A heavy door led into the hallway, a bright but somehow secret illumination shining through its rectangular window. Haniver knew that she needed to reach the basement before anyone saw her; but like the girl in the nursery rhyme, she had to look. She peered through the square of dusty glass. In the corridor there were many soldiers, leaning against the clean white wall, smoking, talking quietly among themselves. There were packages lying at their feet -- and that was all she saw before withdrawing and heading downstairs again, her heart pounding. Something was happening. There was no doubt about that. Haniver allowed herself to wonder about it for the next two flights. After that, the task at hand forced all other considerations from her mind. For now she stood before the door of the meat locker, the dull surface of the steel shimmering in the darkness. She pulled the pin and took the handle in both hands, turning it and pulling back: then came the caress of freezing air on her forehead as she stepped inside, shivering. It was colder than she remembered. The bodies were stacked on the long tables, all in a row, like stones lining a cemetery path. She could see her breath. She dropped her knapsack on the metal floor and unzipped the front pocket. Lifted out the knife. Clipped the sheath to her belt. Albert DeFillips was the first body on the far left, according to the tags. She unzipped the body bag and looked for a second time into those blank brown eyes, eyes like marbles, their pupils sucked up and swallowed by dead irises. Haniver glanced down and saw what she had expected to see. The stitches on the corpse's belly had been disturbed. She unsheathed her knife and cut the threads with the tip of the blade, one by one, relishing the soft snap as she inserted the point below each X-shaped loop and sliced upward. Softly the flaps of skin spread apart. She donned a latex glove, folded the flaps back -- they were triangular, limp, like sails that the wind had abandoned -- and looked into the bloody mess of DeFillips's insides. She switched on a flashlight and peered into that darkened cave, that rich clotted jungle of chaotic eviscera. Beneath the limp sac of his stomach she found what she was looking for. The flat metal case had been sealed inside a plastic bag, nestled snugly among the tired organs and sweetmeats. She took the bag between her forefinger and thumb, lifted it out. Peeled off her bloodstained glove, let the box slide into the palm of her hand. Opened it. Inside the box was a spool of microfilm, coiled up like a tapeworm. Haniver let out a long sigh of satisfaction. According to Herodotus, the Persian general Harpagus had once sent a secret message through enemy lines by sewing it up inside the paunch of a dead hare. Kovac probably thought that no one else read the Greek historians except for him, the arrogant bastard -- Behind her, the door of the meat locker swung shut. "Shit!" she cried, dropping her flashlight. It struck the floor. The bulb broke in a burst of sparks and suddenly she was in darkness, surrounded on all sides by the frozen dead. The blackness was total. She couldn't see a goddamn thing. Her breaths went short and panicky -- she tried to control it but couldn't -- and the cold entered her lungs, stinging the back of her throat. The fragile bones of her elbow and forearm felt like they had gone to ice. Haniver backed up slowly, feeling for the table. Her left hand plunged into something clammy and wet. "Oh God," she whispered. She was wrist-deep in the open gorge of DeFillips's chest. The edge of his broken ribcage caught her wristwatch as she yanked her hand away, the stickiness still on her fingertips. Haniver wiped them on her jeans and stumbled back to the door of the meat locker. Here it was. Haniver ran her hands across its cold smooth surface, felt droplets from her breath condense on the metal: but even before she got there, she knew. There was no handle on this side, no fingerholds. Nothing. The door was as featureless as a mirror, or a frigid pond crusted over with ice. She was trapped. She tried to think. If she screamed now they might hear her. There were ventilation ducts in the hallway just outside the meat locker; she could bang against the door, shout, and perhaps she would be found. But something inside her blanched at the thought. She didn't want to be rescued like this. Especially if the soldiers found her first. Perhaps if she waited, she could find some other way out. The cold was bad, but it wasn't unbearable; and there was enough oxygen here to last for hours. But then there were the dead. The frozen eyeless dead. Somehow that was the worst part. Haniver had visions of the cadavers rising from their wooden slabs, unzipping their body bags from the inside. Twelve dead bodies. Jesus Christ. Here in the darkness, almost anything seemed possible. She felt the skin begin to crawl on the back of her neck, and for a second it felt like cold fingers were brushing across her shoulders, the dead rising calmly and casually with their clouded marbles for eyes -- Haniver pocketed the microfilm and unsheathed her big knife. That made her feel a little better. But the fear was still there. If there was anything she hated, it was this feeling of weakness and helplessness and irrational dread. It plagued her. It had always plagued her. "Inferno," she heard herself say. While she was at Quantico, she had been taught how to deal with fear. Fear came from the innermost core of the mind: there was a mammalian brain built over an avian brain built over a reptilian brain, and at the very center lurked a fishy core of consciousness from which fear rose like a sulfurous bubble from the bottom of the sea. To kill the fear, you had to force yourself to be human. There was more than one way to do this. Haniver recited poetry. Now she searched her mind for something, anything. Something structured, rhythmic. She knew that structure was opposed to dread: dread arose from open spaces, from infinity, from the vacuum whistling around your ears as you stared into the abyss. Divide it up and parcel it out. Conquer it. Haniver cleared her throat, felt the ice there, hesitantly murmured some Dante against the dark: "Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita," she said, "mi ritrovai per una selva oscura, che la diritta via era smarrita -- " And as if by some poetic incantation, there was a rasp of metal against metal and the door of the meat locker swung out into the hallway. Haniver stood there, astonished, the last syllable dying on her lips. In the corridor, a shadow. A man. She strained to see a rifle or uniform. It was Mulder. When the light from the hallway illuminated her face and he saw her standing among the bodies, he stepped back in surprise. "Haniver? What are you doing here?" Haniver tried to seem as unruffled as she could. "I might ask you the same question," she said. Mulder stepped into the freezer. "I don't think you're in a position to trade accusations with me, Haniver." They locked eyes for a moment, each daring the other to speak first. Haniver was conscious of the knife in her hand, of the blood on her clothes, of the particles of ice that were forming deep inside her skull. Finally Mulder broke his own silence. "I'll be honest with you," he said, "but only if you do me the same courtesy." "You're looking for something," she replied. "So are you. Odds are we've got the same thing in mind." "Try me." Another silence. Then Mulder took a photograph from his pocket. It was one of Baker's photos of the dead men. It was Albert DeFillips. He pointed. "Look here." Haniver saw something protruding from the breast pocket of the corpse. A silver of red cardboard with a spiral binding. A notebook. "It's his project diary," Mulder said. "Baker recognized it. He claims he didn't touch anything when he ferried the bodies back to Paramaribo, but we have a box upstairs with the contents of DeFillips's pockets, and the notebook isn't there. It's missing." "You think the diary might be down here?" "Unless you've already found it." "I never saw or heard of that notebook until now," Haniver said defensively. "Is that right?" Mulder gestured to the body on his left. "DeFillips looks a little worse for wear, wouldn't you say? Looks like you've been doing some digging on your own time. Tell me why." "I needed to check something." "And it isn't anything I need to know, is it?" When she didn't say anything in response, Mulder shook his head. "You know, Haniver, you haven't changed a goddamned bit since the Academy. Jesus. You were always after the brass ring -- " " -- and you weren't," Haniver said. "That was why we parted company." "I know. When I heard that you'd gone into chemical weapons, I knew why. Terrorism detail is the most direct way to the top of the Bureau." He paused. "Until that shit in Japan a few years ago. I heard about that. They sent you there to investigate the subway bombing. It could have been your big break. But you stepped on some Japanese toes, clashed with the local police. They filed a complaint and you've been working penny-ante assignments ever since. Am I right?" Haniver smiled bitterly. "Word gets around fast in the FBI. I had a hunch you could hear everything from that basement office." "You went your way, I went mine," he said. "And now we meet again in the rain forest." "Funny how the world works, isn't it?" "Yeah, it's funny. But I know why you're here. You're here because you think this could turn into a high-profile case. Twelve Americans, a terrorist attack. This could be your ticket to the top floor." Mulder paused again. "I don't want you working against me, Haniver. I know that the glory needs to be divided in the end, but I'm not here to take anything from your personal rising star. Do we understand each other? I need your trust." Trust. Standing there with her knife in one hand and the square bulge of the microfilm pressing hard against her thigh, Haniver reflected that few words were more devoid of meaning under such circumstances as these. She remembered what Doyle had said. You can't make honest war in the jungle. Outside the museum of clear ideas, you never show your true face to anyone. "We all have our motivations," she said. * * * As a student at Georgetown, Haniver had worked in the Smithsonian on weekends, and as a result she had a good sense for the layout of most museums. She found a supply closet on the first floor of Fort Gambaro and picked the lock in less than thirty seconds. Inside she found what she was looking for -- a microfilm viewer that clipped onto a modified flashlight. She brought it upstairs, avoiding both Mulder and the soldiers who still prowled the hallways. The bathroom on the sixth floor. As before, she closed the door and bolted it behind her. With trembling fingers she pulled the metal box from her pocket. Opened it. Took the spool of microfilm, threaded it through the viewer and turned off the lights. Haniver switched on the flashlight, projecting the satellite photographs onto the faded yellow ceiling. They were rather primitive monochrome photos but the resolution was good. She adjusted the brightness. Here. The first picture had been taken six days ago. Haniver could see the gray rectangles of plantation buildings, the cinderblock barracks where the DOE team had lived and worked. The copal trees were planted in an orderly formation beyond the compound, the neat rows of feedstock hemmed in by denser and more chaotic rain forest on all sides. Haniver sat down on the tiles, moved to the next picture. It was dated three days ago, just before the distress call. Nothing had changed. Impatient, she scrolled through the next six or seven pictures. Apparently this was a selection from some larger archive. Judging from the timestamps, the Surinamese had been taking snapshots of the plantation every hour or so. Now she reached the day of the catastrophe. The first three or four pictures were, again, maddeningly monotonous. In one photograph Haniver thought she could see bodies scattered on the ground, but she wasn't sure. Then she saw something. The building at the far end of the compound was flattened. Misshapen. She remembered Baker's testimony. The sixth cinderblock structure -- the communications booth -- had been demolished by some unknown force. Something big. But it wasn't right. There weren't any roads leading through the rain forest. If anything larger than a car had driven into the plantation, there would have been signs of it. Uprooted vegetation. A hairline change in albedo. But as Haniver searched the satellite photos, running her eyes across the shadings and contours, she realized that there was nothing of the sort. The surrounding jungle was untouched. Which meant that any attack on the plantation had to have come from the air. "The air," she whispered. Haniver saw it. On the northeast corner of the satellite photograph there was a shadow, an elliptical gray patch slightly darker than the surrounding forest. She scrolled to the next picture. An hour later, the shadow was gone. She scrolled back and stared at the image. It could have been almost anything, a cloud, a surface irregularity on the lens of the satellite itself. But she knew that it wasn't. She could see wings, something that could have been a fuselage -- but it wasn't an airplane. She didn't know what the hell it was. But she knew what it meant. Just as the men were dying, just as the communications booth was being destroyed, something had flown above the BFDP plantation. Something extremely large. She could estimate its size by comparing it with nearby landmarks. For a full minute she calculated mentally, assuming that the object had been flying close to canopy level when the snapshot was taken. When she finally arrived at a figure, she couldn't believe it and tried again, sitting there among the stale bathroom smells, the flashlight hot in her hands. But no matter how many times Haniver rechecked her work, she always came to the same goddamned conclusion. The object flying above the plantation had been at least one hundred feet long. Maybe more.< Part II - The Killing Jar Into the jungle. Their plane banked to one side and approached the airstrip that missionaries had built many years ago, a thin line of dirt slicing through the forest like a burn. Since that morning they had flown nearly one hundred miles over pasture, field, savannah and finally the knotted canopy of the hylaea itself. The landscape was repetitive but fascinating: rippling seas of green lay trussed by sinusoidal rivers, gleaming like mercury in the sun. "A number of these rivers have not yet been named," said Kovac, speaking loudly over the thunder of the engine. "But I will not exaggerate. This territory is not unknown. Do not imagine that you will be exploring places that the white man has never seen. It has all been charted and mapped for years." "But don't discount the mystery," Baker said, his naturally soft voice almost inaudible beneath the clatter of propellers. "I've led botanical expeditions into this area before, and we found new species every time. Only a bare fraction of the plant life in Amazonia has been catalogued -- " " -- and even less has been analyzed," added Scully. "The chemical properties of ninety-eight percent of the jungle have never been adequately tested. This is the greatest pharmacy in the world, and we're cutting it down acre by acre." "You think the cure for cancer is down there?" Haniver asked. Scully touched the bridge of her nose, almost by reflex. "It could very well be." Now the canopy rushed up to meet them at an alarming rate. Scully saw that the forest had been cleared in one place to make a village, thatch and bamboo huts huddling around a central common. The soil was a rich, vivid red: there were gardens behind the houses, the ground planted thickly with green vines and uniform tall stalks. Next to her, Doyle groaned, his head in his hands. He had been complaining of a hangover for most of the morning. His eyes were bloodshot and dry. Mulder peered through the window. "Isn't this where you saw the glow?" he asked Baker. "Can you show me exactly where it was?" "I don't think I could," Baker said, scanning the horizon. "I was in the village when the light appeared. I didn't have a very good view of the rest of the rain forest. But Quassapelagh might have a better idea." "Quassapelagh?" Mulder pulled out his notebook. "How do you spell that?" "How the hell should I know? I told you about him," Baker said. "He was out hunting when I saw the glow. From what I gathered, he climbed a tree to get a better look at it." "Will he be willing to talk?" Baker shrugged. "If he wants to talk, he'll come to you. But if he doesn't, I -- " Before Baker could finish, the plane landed with a thud, cutting him off and jolting everyone a few inches forward. Doyle swore and clutched his temples. The airplane coasted along the runway, bouncing, gritting dirt beneath its spinning wheels. Kovac, unruffled, checked the watch dangling by a chain from his safari vest. "It is almost twelve," he announced, his head bobbing as their plane jounced over another dip. "If all goes according to schedule, we should be at the plantation by mid-afternoon." "These things rarely go according to schedule," Haniver replied. After another hundred yards they slid to a stop, the air around them heavy with scarlet dust. The propeller slowed to a standstill. The doors opened. And suddenly they were in the jungle. Stepping out, Scully immediately felt the sun beating down on her bare head. The air smelled of loam. A bird was singing, its voice throaty and mournful. Through the red haze she could see the crowns of trees towering hundreds of feet above her, branches hung with vines, orchids blooming in minor floral explosion. There was an impression of gigantism and crushing density, of life teeming and pressing forward and crowding together with a relentless Gothic abandon that made her feel like an insect. "You feel it, don't you?" Mulder said, coming up beside her. "I don't care how often this place has been charted and explored and mapped, but Christ, there's something new here. It's so obvious. Scully, we're so goddamned arrogant...." "Excuse me?" Mulder took her aside from the plane, lowering his voice. "I'm talking about the human race, Scully." His face was concealed by the clouds of dust but she knew that his eyes were gleaming. "We've always assumed that alien visitors would be primarily interested in our own species, that they would focus their attention on human society. But why? I think that the aliens might naturally gravitate towards the Amazon rain forest." She looked at him. "You think this? Since when?" "Since two minutes ago. This rain forest has the highest species richness of any imaginable ecosystem -- ninety thousand species of plants, more animals than we could ever hope to catalogue. Compare that to our average suburban community, where all forms of life except for crabgrass and housecats have been systematically weeded away. The aliens are here, Scully. I can't imagine them turning aside from such an incredible scientific prospect." The dust cleared. Mulder was grinning. Scully shook her head. "Sometimes I can't tell whether you're joking or not." "It varies from week to week," Mulder said. They went back to the plane. Baker and Haniver had already unloaded most of the equipment from the cargo hatch. There were I-frame packs, biosensors, medical kits, machetes. They laid them out on the ground like offerings to the trees looming high above. The forest hugged the edge of the airstrip like a curtain before a stage, a living veil masking some monstrous holy of holies. Doyle soaked a handkerchief with his canteen, folded it carefully and placed it within the crown of his hat, for a cooling pad. He squinted up at the sun. "We should go," he said. "I want to be at that plantation before my head explodes." "You will be," said Kovac. He had been discussing something with the pilot, a burly Creole, and now turned to the others. "We should find the rafts ready at the riverside. But we also need to retrieve the biosuits from the Tirio village." Scully stepped forward. "I can do that." "I'll come with you," Haniver said. In the end Baker joined them both, saying that he wanted to speak with Quassapelagh. It was a walk of several hundred yards from their end of the airstrip to the village. They moved slowly through the heat, trying to keep beneath the relative shade of the treetops. In the open, the sun was merciless. When they were halfway there, Baker removed his own floppy straw hat and placed it on Scully's head; she smiled quizzically at him, but was grateful and did not remove it. Soon they drew within sight of the village. Perhaps a dozen huts stood before them. Some were sturdy buildings with walls of bamboo; others resembled brown tufts of thatch raised high on spindly legs; the rest were barely lean-tos, freestanding roofs with open sides. Most were deteriorating, crumbling, many partially destroyed by fire or insects. "Not all of these houses are the work of Tirios," Baker said. "In the old days, the missionaries would gather hundreds of Indians into a big village like this, regardless of tribal background. It made them easier to convert." "It's a ghost town," Haniver said, looking at the dry empty husks. It looked as if a flock of enormous birds had nested here before taking flight for the antipodes. "So why did Quassapelagh stay?" asked Scully, trudging alongside Baker. "I was hoping you might be able to ask him yourself," Baker said. "Usually he meets us when we land." He glanced from side to side. "This worries me," he said, but did not elaborate. They arrived at the storage hut. It was no more than a thicket of palm leaves and dried grasses, bundled together into a dome-shaped rotunda ten feet tall. Scully ducked her head and went inside. The interior was far cooler than the surrounding air: firewood, shovels, unfinished canoes, carved wooden stools and miscellaneous bric-a-brac lay bundled together in the darkness, cluttered but somehow redolent of a hidden order. There was no dust on the bundles, and the thatch of the walls and ceiling was clean-smelling and free of mold. "I feel as if we're trespassing," said Haniver. "Trespass is an unknown concept in this place," Baker replied. He knelt in the middle of the hut. Before him stood a large metal trunk covered with various seals and insignias. He broke the seals and lifted the lid. Inside were six yellow biohazard suits, neatly folded and velcroed into bundles complete with boots, hoods, gloves, hoses, gas masks and respirator units. He pinched the fabric of one of the suits between his finger and thumb. It was thick rubberized nylon. As they took the suits out of the trunk and set them on the ground, Haniver happened to look up and see several bows and arrows stuck into the thatch of the roof, like pins in a pincushion. "Curare," she said. "What?" asked Scully. "These arrows. I wonder whether any of them are poisoned. I just finished scanning a bunch of arrow-poison into the mass spectrometer at Quantico, you know, so we'd have their signatures on file. I did a lot of reading on the subject. It's pretty lethal stuff." "None of these arrows have curare on them," said Baker, pulling one out of the roof and examining it. The arrow had a short blunt head made from a fragment of bone. "You don't leave poisoned arrows lying around where they can scratch you by accident. I've hunted with Indians before. They carry their arrowheads separately...." He trailed off, looking up at the ceiling. Scully followed his gaze. There was a damaged patch next to the arrows, a region of the roof where the weave was messier than the rest of the thatch. It was clear that something had been hanging there very recently. As she watched, a few pieces of dried grass drifted down. "What are we looking at?" Scully asked. No response. When she lowered her eyes again, she saw that Baker was gone. * * * There were footprints in the red dust. Baker saw the clear impression of five toes and a rounded heel on the ground just beyond the threshold of the hut -- and suddenly he was off and running, following the trail through the village, obeying some instinct or intuition he could neither explain nor understand. He knew that the markings were recent. Quassapelagh had retrieved a bow and quiver of arrows from the storage hut only a few minutes ago. From there, he had gone into the rain forest. His footprints made a straight line for the trees. Baker was a fast runner, and within ten seconds he had followed the footsteps to the edge of the village. He passed through the garden, moving through the seemingly random rows of manioc and papaya and banana trees, searching in vain for more marks on the ground. Another dozen paces and he would be in the jungle. He knew that the trail would be easier to follow there. He squeezed through a spindly bamboo thicket and found himself in the emerald depths of the forest. Monkeys chattered overhead. Baker made his way through the dimness, moving more slowly and carefully now: it was easy to lose one's bearings here. The gray trunks of trees towered above him like petrified stakes. The soil beneath his feet was mossy and almost bare. He took a deep breath. Ever since their plane had landed, he had been keeping the memories at bay: but now they crowded around him like demons around St. Anthony. He had not anticipated how bad it would be. For a moment it felt as if he were not at the Tirio village at all, but thirty miles upstream, approaching the edge of the plantation where twelve bodies waited in the boiling rain.... He couldn't stop thinking of those arrows. Baker had been in Quassapelagh's storage hut many times, could recognize the different kinds of arrows he kept. The shafts tipped with a blunt head of bone, for example, you used to hunt colorful birds. The idea was to stun the birds without killing them. You could cage them and trade them alive to Dutch merchants, who sold them for pets, or pluck a few of their feathers and set them free. There were other arrows for other purposes. Some had big lanceolate heads, for hunting tapirs and pacas; others were crafted from bamboo, or the sharp front teeth of a peccary. Each had its own designated place in the thatch of the roof. But there was another kind of arrow of which Quassapelagh rarely spoke. The shaft was long and trimmed with eagle feathers, and the head was an isosceles triangle, razor-sharp, painstakingly carved from what Baker recognized as a man's thighbone. These arrows always hung separately, in a quiver of their own -- and these were the ones that had been missing from the storage hut. "Quassapelagh," Baker said. For there he was. The old Tirio sat on a rotten tree stump, eyes closed, legs dangling from his perch. His seat was black and twisted, stunted and eaten by rain: the tree had fallen long ago and now only the stump remained, its roots like thick coiled ropes. He seemed like an extension of the wood, so dark and still did he sit. Baker was less than six feet away before he saw him. Quassapelagh was perhaps five feet tall, his face lined and weary, his long hair the color of a raven's wings. Designs of purple pigment spiraled up and down his legs. A red breechcloth and beaded belt encircled his waist. In his left hand he clutched a snakewood bow. At his feet lay a jaguar. It was a medium-sized beast of perhaps two hundred pounds, its yellow hide spotted with orange and black. It was wounded in three places. The arrow had entered through its right eye, piercing its brain and exiting through the rear of its skull: the Tirio were not known as the world's greatest archers for nothing. A deep incision ran across the cat's belly. Baker looked down and felt his own bowels turn to ice. A tiny speckled forepaw protruded from inside the jaguar's womb. It was a female, and she had been pregnant with cubs. A thin sliver of flesh had been removed from her back. Baker saw that Quassapelagh's hands and mouth were bloody. The old Indian opened his eyes. "I have eaten of her," he said. Baker only stood there, the waves of shock rolling across his body. He was no anthropologist but he knew that pregnant animals were taboo in Tirio culture -- indeed, in almost every culture. A nameless dread blossomed in his heart as he stared at the dead animal and stammered: "W-Why did you eat of her?" Quassapelagh turned to face him. His eyes were cold. "Do you sense the abyss between us, Baker?" He did. For a long shivering moment the jungle seemed to recede from him on all sides. He understood, as if for the first time, the enormous difference between Quassapelagh's world and his own. He stared at this man, this aging Tirio with whom he had spoken so many times, sitting around a fire or hiking through the rain forest: and for an instant the air between them seemed troubled, as if a pane of frosted glass had slipped across his field of vision. The Tirio slid down from the stump, kneeled alongside the dead jaguar. His wrinkled face was utterly unreadable. "In ancient Egypt," he said, "it was so." "What?" "During the day of the pharaohs," Quassapelagh said thoughtfully, "they were never allow to eat the flesh of the pig. It was a taboo flesh, you understand? You were not permitted to touch. Except for one night in the year, when they would feast on the taboo animal; and on this night, they were require to speak only the truth to one another. For to ingest what is forbidden compels us to be honest." He fixed one of his black eyes on Baker. "Are you honest with me?" Baker cleared his throat. His heart was like a small frightened animal in his chest. "I don't know what you're talking about, Tamo," he said. Tamo was Tirio for grandfather. "Hrumph," said the old man. He prodded the jaguar with the end of his bow. "Two cubs inside the belly. It is an omen, Baker. I have taste of taboo flesh, so I am compelled to be straightforward with you." Quassapelagh rose, gestured to the blackened stump at his right. "Sit down, my friend." A few hesitant steps forward and Baker sat on the edge of the stump. The wood was fragrant and slightly moist. Now he was very close to the dead jaguar. He saw that the left eye of the cat, the one that had not been pierced by the arrow, was half-open. The emerald green iris sparkled even in death. "An omen?" he asked. Quassapelagh nodded. "Two cubs in the belly mean two deaths in the world." "Two deaths?" Baker repeated numbly. The unreality of this situation was too much for him. He felt as if he were sleepwalking. "What do you mean, two deaths?" "There is pattern in events," said Quassapelagh. "Magic is nothing more than attempt to understand this pattern. Why did man believe you can see the future by cutting open some beast and examining the entrail? Only because it is all part of the greater pattern. You cast the yarrow sticks, and that is pattern. You consult the stars, and that is pattern too." Baker looked at the tiny paw poking out from between the jaguar's haunches. The fur of the embryo was wet and matted with amniotic fluid. He knew that jaguar cubs were born blind, their eyes sewn shut. "We're heading back to the plantation today," he heard himself say, as if from a great distance. "Are you telling me that there will be two more deaths?" "I tell you nothing. I went hunting for the jaguar, knowing that I will receive message if I do so. Here is the message." Quassapelagh indicated the unborn cubs with a flick of his bow. "Lend whatever interpretation you will." But the interpretation had already been decided. "I came back to the jungle to make sure that no one else got hurt," said Baker. "Did you really?" asked the Tirio. "Yes." Instead of replying immediately, Quassapelagh regarded him in silence. Baker was slightly uncomfortable under the scrutiny, but bore it without complaint. The old man's eyes felt like a tiny insect crawling along the inside of his skull. Baker was very conscious of his broad tanned face, his beard. Finally Quassapelagh seemed satisfied. He smiled. "It is good to see you again, Baker," he said -- although his eyes still had that strange coldness, and the smile did not touch the upper half of his face. Quassapelagh slipped a hand into his breechcloth, removed a small wooden knife. In the uncertain light, his smile seemed to deepen. "I want you to do something for me. It may seem strange, but it is a matter of importance. Or rather, I feel it to be so." Quassapelagh bent down over the carcass of the jaguar. The body was still steaming. He took the stiff scratchy hide in his hands and ripped it away from the back, the tendons snapping, further exposing the place from which he had already removed a strip of the animal's meat. The knife was made from a sliver of bamboo, and it was very sharp. As Baker watched, he sliced away a narrow piece of warm flesh, took it into his hands. "You must eat," he said, extending the meat towards Baker. A deep revulsion seemed to well up within his chest. "I can't do that," Baker said. "You must," Quassapelagh repeated, the blood dripping from between his fingers. "I would not ask something so strange unless I believed in it wholeheartedly. If you are returning to your plantation, you step into danger of which there is no word to describe. The jaguar tells us that lives will be lost. But the jaguar is not correct necessarily. You came back to prevent further suffering, if you say the truth. Then take this, and eat, and you will have a piece of the jaguar within you." Baker looked at the scrap of meat. Even at this distance, he could sense the life coursing through it still: the cells would not all be dead yet, for they did not understand that their life had been taken away. He wondered how long it took for all the cells in a dead man to grow silent. He remembered taking the bodies into his arms, remembered bringing them down to the river and tying them into the rafts, and knew in his heart that even as the men went stiff and cold, part of them had still been alive as he ferried them down the dark waters. Outside himself, Baker took the jaguar flesh, like a communion, and ate of it. * * * On their way down to the river, Haniver turned to Scully. "Can I ask you a question?" The two of them hiked through the jungle with the biohazard suits in their arms. The air around them felt curdled, almost sweet, thick with mist and quivering with the sounds of invisible animals. "Go ahead," said Scully. "Do you think the pathology of the dead researchers might be consistent with curare poisoning?" Looking around, Scully considered. The fog and trees formed a sculpted wall like the narthex of a cathedral, the canopy shattering the sunlight into shafts of amber. Only the tension of the moment, she thought, kept the vegetation from creeping forward and swallowing them alive. "I don't think so," she said. "Both curare and nerve gases work by suffocation, so there might be some superficial similarities; but these deaths were far too violent to be the result of arrow-poison. There was vomiting, involuntary urination and defecation. In comparison, death by curare seems positively peaceful." "With regards to pure curare, you're right," Haniver said, stepping around a tangled root buttress that rose suddenly in her path. "But most tribes don't use curare alone. They have traditional recipes with an active ingredient and a number of admixtures, components that for religious or cultural reasons are included in the poison along with the curare plant itself. Tainting it. Strengthening it, supposedly. Most scientists thought the admixtures were just hocus-pocus -- " "Eye of newt, toe of frog...." "Exactly. But some believe that these seemingly extraneous ingredients may intensify or exacerbate the symptoms, rendering the poison more potent. Deadlier." Haniver wiped the sweat from her forehead. "Maybe the symptoms we saw were the result of admixtures." "What's your point?" Scully asked, struggling beneath the weight of the suits. "What if these men were killed by curare? What if the facility was attacked by a hostile tribe of Indians?" Scully began to object, but Haniver kept talking. "Think about it. When we did the autopsies we weren't thinking in those terms. We were examining the mucous membranes, looking for signs of an atmospheric attack -- but we weren't checking for puncture wounds, at least not specifically." "You're saying we overlooked something?" "I'm suggesting the possibility." "Fine," said Scully, halting beneath a tree. "Let's rest for a moment." She set the biosuits down, removed her hat. In the distance, she could hear the crash and murmur of the riverbank, the sound of the current lapping against stone. The thin soil felt like muscle beneath her feet. She fished a rubber band from her pocket, tied her hair back in a makeshift ponytail. Haniver placed her suits on the ground, leaned against the smooth trunk of a tree. "You're wondering why a tribe might want to attack the plantation," she said. "The thought did occur to me." "Relations between the indigenous Amazon cultures and our intrusive white society have never been peaceful. I'm not trying to force my own conclusions, you understand. This is public knowledge." "Public knowledge." Scully let the phrase fall between them like a tennis ball. "That's right. And if you and your partner weren't so busy chasing aliens, you might have done some research and come to the same conclusion." Haniver shook her head. "I'm sorry. That was uncalled for. But you should know that it isn't many years since the Sikiyana tribe in Brazil declared war on foreign rubber tappers, killing many in the process -- " "Because the rubber tappers burned their villages and scattered their families," Scully said. "Did your research tell you that? Before we left Washington I read every available account of tribal violence in Amazonia from 1975 onward and concluded there was no reason to suspect it in this case. So don't assume that I didn't do my homework." Scully felt a small grain of anger gathering behind her eyes. This had been a test, she realized. If there was anything the past few years had taught her to resent, it was being tested without her knowledge. Haniver bent down, picked up the biosuits again. "I stand corrected," she said coolly. "But just because tension is buried doesn't mean it won't occasionally erupt at certain times." "Case in point," Scully said. Haniver smiled weakly. "I'm sorry," she said again. "I'm just trying to suggest a hypothesis. Which is more than anyone else seems to have ventured thus far." Scully picked up her suits, resumed her hike through the forest. "It's too early for that." "It's never too early," said Haniver, following close behind. "The sooner you imagine your enemy, the sooner you can defend yourself against him. These suits are a defense against one kind of enemy. But they aren't arrow-proof." "I suppose not." They walked in silence for another minute. Then Scully stepped through the dense undergrowth and found herself at the riverside. The water was broad and black, the surface misted with vapor and dotted with the translucent eyes of four-eyed fish -- globes of jelly floating like periscopes above the waterline. The sense of the river as a living creature was very strong. It reminded Scully of a serpent, rippling in scaly folds, reptilian current slithering along the bank. Mulder and Doyle stood several hundred yards downstream, packing supplies into the rafts. These dugout canoes were perhaps fifteen feet in length, equipped with outboard motors and orange nylon canopies for the cargo. The paddles had been thrust into the sandy soil. Kovac leaned on one of the oars, gazing into the river with an expression of rapt awareness, as if he were trying to read his own future in the eddies. Scully was about to call to them when she was struck silent by the muted roar of an engine high above. Leaning back, she saw their plane take off from behind the treetops, disappearing quickly into the burnished sky. For an instant, the sense of isolation was overpowering. Scully closed her eyes and felt the forest stretching around her for millions upon millions of acres, luxuriant, gigantic and dark. When she opened her eyes again, she saw that Mulder was approaching her. He had stripped down to a T-shirt and shorts, his hair plastered down with sweat, the beginnings of a sunburn blooming on his nose. "Scully," he said, "this place is amazing. I've been here less than an hour and already I'm sensing something special. I should have brought my Kirlian equipment, the auras here must be absolutely -- oh, shit." Thirty yards away, he tripped. Scully almost laughed, but checked it in time: you were always dangerously close to losing your balance on this bank, your boots snagging themselves on hidden stranglers or knotted growths of fungi. In the forest itself, the struggle for sunlight kept undergrowth to a minimum; but next to the river, everything flourished and tangled together and multiplied. Mulder bounced up again. "I'm all right. You see? Bioplasmic energy must be off the chart here...." Haniver leaned in, whispered. "He hasn't changed much, has he?" "This is one of his better days," Scully replied. But she had caught a glimpse of the look in her partner's eyes, and realized that he was playing the clown for a reason. She smiled. Mulder sometimes exaggerated certain aspects of himself, bringing his spookier side to the forefront as if daring others to underestimate him; and from what she knew of Jenny Haniver, Scully guessed that she might be just the type to make that mistake. The two women met Mulder halfway, the denseness of the vegetation forcing them to waddle. When they were a dozen feet apart he asked: "Where's Baker?" "Good question," Haniver said. "He took off after we got to the village. I'm guessing he went to look for Quassapelagh." Mulder checked his watch. "I'll need to find them both," he said. "Wait here." He turned away, heading for the jungle. "Mulder, hold it." Scully tried to catch up with him, but she'd only gone a few feet when the toe of her sneaker snagged on something and she found herself tipping forward. She was falling. Scully pinwheeled her arms, looked up, saw a tree branch beckoning just above her head; she lunged for it, succeeded only in snapping off a green twig with a bunch of pale avocado flowers at one end. Finally she managed to steady herself. Took a breath. Looking up idly, she saw that the branch from which she had broken the twig was covered with small brown ants. One fell onto her shoulder; she flicked it away in disgust. There was a brief pause, like the downbeat in a silent comedy. Then a cracking sound -- and suddenly ants rained down on Scully from all sides. There was no time to breathe, no time to think; one moment the air was clear and a millisecond later the world was filled with crawling, biting darkness. Scully screamed, instinctively squeezing her eyes shut and shielding her face, but it was too late -- the ants were everywhere -- she felt them stinging and squirming over her skin, vomiting milky liquid, the white-hot pricks of their microscopic jaws digging into her skin and still they cascaded down, millions upon millions of ants, their tiny bodies forming a living maelstrom of pain that battered her like fierce raindrops and buried her gasping beneath them -- Something collided with her body, pushing her to one side. She was thrown off her feet, toppled, fell, and suddenly felt freezing water rush up to meet her and cover her, the top of the river closing over her head, plunging her into relief, fish dashing away from her in fright -- Scully blew bubbles, felt the ants slowly detach themselves from her skin, drifting away. A pair of strong arms encircling her waist. She kicked, flung her arms out. Drove towards the light. She surfaced, heaving and sputtering, the sun painfully brilliant on her eyes. Baker was treading water beside her, his hair wet against his forehead. It was a long moment before either of them could speak. "Are you all right?" he said. Scully ducked her head beneath the water again, hoping for the icy coolness to shock her back into some sort of sense. She resurfaced, her hair in her face. "Yeah," she said -- and became aware of a dozen stinging welts covering her forearms, the back of her neck, her scalp. She touched them gingerly, winced at the pain. The current had swept her down to where the rafts were being loaded; the others stood in a cluster by the riverbank, their faces etched with concern. She looked at Baker. "Where the hell did you come from?" "The jungle," he said. "I was about to join you when you triggered the attack. Lucky for you, the ants were sluggish. Otherwise you'd have been bitten even more badly." "Fuck," said Scully. It was all she could manage. "Yeah," Baker said amiably. "Let's get out of here before the crocodiles see us." He saw the look on her face. "I'm kidding." He took her by the shoulders and guided her gently back to shore. About thirty seconds had passed since she had snatched the bough from the tree. * * * "Ow," said Scully, hissing from between her teeth. "Jesusfuckingchrist, ouch." "Hold still," Baker said, brandishing a pair of tweezers. "The ants left their jaws in your skin. If you leave them there, you'll get infected." Scully spread baking soda paste across her arms. "I'm the fucking doctor here. Don't tell me about infection. Ow!" They were back in the Tirio village. Scully sat on a wooden stool beneath a roof of palm leaves; Baker knelt by her side. For the occasion he'd donned a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles, probing carefully with tweezers, examining the bites. There were twelve in all. They contained formic acid, and would continue to irritate for another day or so. "If nothing else," he said, "you've learned the first law of survival in the jungle. Don't trust anything -- not even the trees." Scully smiled. Baker worked on her arm a while longer, then began to check her scalp, running his fingers carefully through her hair. After a few seconds had gone by, he said: "This is a symbiotic relationship, you know." Scully wondered whether this was Baker's idea of a come-on. "Pardon me?" "Between the tree and the ants. It's a rather lovely example of co-evolution. The ants live in the hollow stem, feeding on pockets of nectar. In return, they patrol the area, killing insects and caterpillars, clipping intrusive plants. They even attack cattle and humans that happen to come too close. The odor sets them off." "Tell them I was impressed." Scully looked up, her forehead covered with white paste. Fifty yards away Mulder and Quassapelagh were walking and talking at the edge of the village. The old Tirio had been strolling alongside Baker when the mishap with the ants had occurred; afterwards, he had introduced himself politely to the others, and Mulder had been instantly fascinated by Quassapelagh and his life story. Now, as Quassapelagh listened, Mulder gestured in so graphic a manner -- his hands swooping up into a parabola, then diving back down again to describe a cylinder in the air before him, a pillar, a beam -- that Scully had no difficulty in following their conversation: "Have you ever seen something in the sky?" Mulder asked. "Something you couldn't explain?" "There are many things I cannot explain. I believe that you and I have this in common." The Tirio leaned on a knobby staff of white wood. "There is one important difference, however," he said. "I live among my mystery, but you must fly several hundred kilometers to find them." "Believe me," Mulder said, "I can find plenty of mystery without leaving my own country." "Maybe it is mysteries of a different order." Quassapelagh nodded at the dense woven fabric of the rain forest, the lianas, the convoluted webs of epiphytes. "You can explain little of this, I bet. I do not mean to accuse you. But the Tirio had a culture older than your cathedrals, and when the Tirio accepted cattle farming and shopping centers and abandoned the jungle, the wisdom lost in the process was older than your Bible, and more frightening. Because it can never be written down." He paused. "We might speak, for example, of the Mai d'agoa." "The what?" "You see? To you, it is only words. To us, perhaps something more. But listen. If our wisdom is older than yours, the light in the treetops is older than our wisdom, you understand? Perhaps older than the jungle itself." Quassapelagh laid a hand on Mulder's shoulder. From another man, it might have seemed a gesture of reassurance. From the old Tirio, it was a warning. A judgment. "Three days ago, I have seen twelve men return from the jungle. I do not need to tell you that they were dead. Now you pursue the same path. Have you considered this fact?" "I always consider," said Mulder. "And what did you conclude?" "I don't know. By the time I concluded anything, I was already in Suriname." A thin smile creased Quassapelagh's face. "Tell me what brought you here." "It was a story," Mulder said, his hands in his pockets. "Thirty-two years ago a group of Dutch businessmen went into the jungle to survey the site of a proposed bauxite mine. These guys may not have been native, but they were smart -- between the six of them they had maybe one hundred years of experience in the rain forest. While they were in the interior, a strange light emerged from the treetops. The Ministry of the Interior received sightings from as far away as Brazil." He kicked a stone out of his path, saw the minor puff of dust it made. "When the team didn't report back to Paramaribo on schedule, a rescue party was organized. They found the six missing men less than eighty miles from where this village stands. They were all dead. It's a classic case of paranormal homicide. For my entire life, I've been waiting for a chance to solve this goddamned mystery." Quassapelagh nodded. "And are you prepare to face it yourself?" "I don't plan on getting killed, if that's what you mean," said Mulder. "In that case, we shall meet again." The two men halted. Mulder looked around and saw that they were standing in a lush garden, unfenced, the leaves twisting together above the ground. The soil was loose, powdery. It was hard to tell where deliberate planting ended and the forest began. To his eyes, the garden seemed a chaos of different plants -- manioc, papayas, yams, tobacco, cashews, cotton, squashes. "Do you garden, Agent Mulder?" asked Quassapelagh. "No. But I do own several houseplants in various stages of death or senility." "You should learn the Tirio way. We toss a handful of seeds onto the earth, see if any sprouts come up. In the long run, it is the only method that works." "I sense a parable coming." "You are correct. I apologize; when one lives alone for a long time, one begins to speak in aphorism whenever one has company. But listen. The good gardener is the one who imitates nature. When I traveled as a youth, all the farms I saw were divided into rows, columns. Men weeded and fenced off their fields and sprayed their food with chemical substances and never realized what made their crops so vulnerable in the first place. For man cannot rebel against nature and survive for long." "And how am I supposed to survive?" "Tend your garden. Guard against those who would corrupt. This jungle will test you harshly, try to deceive you. In the rain forest, death wears many faces. You must learn to recognize them all." Mulder shut his eyes. It was almost three o'clock. From behind and to his left he heard Kovac calling, telling him to move down to the river. Beyond these words he could hear other noises. The cries of birds. The faintest crooning of wind through the trees. When he opened his eyes again, Quassapelagh had disappeared. * * * Doyle dunked his canteen into the river, scooped it out and poured the water slowly over his head. "Ahhh," he said, shaking his damp hair. "Never let it be said that I don't enjoy the simpler pleasures in life." The droplets splattered Scully, who sat behind him with the casefile clutched in one hand. "Watch it," she said, uncrossing her legs. She set the folder onto her lap, glanced down momentarily before repositioning herself in the canoe. Her feet were propped against a molded plastic suitcase that lay snugly in the bottom of the hull. She had been watching it carefully ever since opening it by mistake after her accident with the ants, searching blindly for a first-aid kit. Instead of gauze and adhesive bandages, however, the case had contained two sinister-looking assault rifles, disassembled and packed in black polystyrene. She had looked up quickly, seen Kovac staring at her. Their gazes had locked. Without lowering her eyes, she had closed the case again, latched it tightly. Put it away. But now she was keeping track of its whereabouts at all times. The two boats puttered down the river, motors murmuring with the current. Haniver, Mulder and Kovac floated slightly ahead of the others, Doyle, Scully and Baker close behind. Kovac and Baker knelt in the rear of their respective canoes, each holding a paddle as a rudder, steering with quick, expert strokes. They cut through the dark waters with a languorous ease, moving past jungle on both sides. It was a landscape of monumental size and complexity, eighty-foot trees cloaked in mosses and epiphytes, fungi sprouting from the ground like sweetmeats, lianas twining in the canopy. The more Scully looked, the more intricate her surroundings became. At one point Baker guided the canoe over to where a number of bromeliads hung heavily over the water, carefully plucked a thick-stemmed plant and showed Scully how a certain species of tadpole -- found nowhere else in the world -- swam, matured and completed its entire life cycle in the bowl-shaped interior. "I know how it feels," she said. Even the air seemed alive. Dragonflies buzzed above the water. The sunlight was kaleidoscopic and blinding. Mulder and Doyle had stripped to the waist an hour ago; the others apparently knew better, for both pairs of exposed shoulders were soon raw and peeling with sunburn. "I feel like a fried egg," Doyle said to no one in particular. "In two hours you'll be able to strip off my skin and make a sampler." "Is that a promise?" asked Scully. In the other boat, Haniver trailed her fingers in the river. Three inches down, their tips became invisible. "Black water," she murmured to herself. "White soil. We're in poisonous territory." "What do you mean?" Mulder was fiddling idly with a deck of cards, fanning it with a flick of his wrist, trying for a one-handed shuffle. "The poorer the dirt, the more dangerous the plants. Amazonia has the most infertile soil in the world, but supports a lush and diverse ecosystem. How? Hoarding. All the nutrients and minerals are stored in the plants themselves -- and the plants will fight to the death to protect themselves. That's why they evolve defense compounds. It's a war zone." Haniver flicked the water from her hands. "This area is the worst of all. The soil is oligotrophic -- it's old, white, eroded down from mountain ranges. It's about as nutritious as beach sand. So the plants evolve more lethal defenses to make sure their nutrients aren't stolen. That's why you never see insect-eaten leaves in the rain forest. Even when leaves fall to the ground, they're still so full of alkaloids and tannins and cyanide compounds that the animals can't go near them; the minerals are recycled back into surface roots almost immediately. Meanwhile the toxins are leached out by rain and flow down to the river. That's why the water is black. It's full of poison." Mulder listened to her speech in silence, then shook his head in amusement. "You know, I hate to admit it, but I've missed these little lectures of yours," he said. "Reggie Purdue once told me that you were the most didactic split-tail he'd ever known. I could understand what he meant." "I remember. I had him sign a notarized statement to that effect, and framed it and hung it in my first office. But you did a good amount of lecturing yourself, if I recall. We needed a moderator and stopwatch before we could have a normal conversation." Haniver leaned back in the boat. "Those were good times, Fox. Why haven't we spoken since?" He shuffled the deck. "Because we hated each other's guts. Remember that?" "It was fun, though. You were the only one worth competing against, really." "Funny how we had to meet again in the jungle." He squared the cards, tried for a bridge: but the deck burst beneath his fingers, scattering everywhere, the ace of hearts and the queen of diamonds pinwheeling upward and landing in the river. They floated pathetically downstream to the other raft, where Scully leaned over, fished them out of the water and shook them dry. Mulder realized that Haniver was eyeing him. When he turned to her again, there was a gleam in her pupils that he didn't like. He recognized that look, knew what was coming. "I'll bet I solve this case before you do," Haniver said. "We'll see about that," Mulder replied. "Hold it." It was Kovac, his voice tense. Looking back, Mulder saw that Baker had cut his engine and was drifting with the current. Not taking his eyes from the other boat, Kovac did the same. The silence was sudden, overwhelming. Even the birds seemed dead in the trees. The only sound was the lapping of water against the hull. Kovac dipped his paddle into the river, edging the craft toward the starboard bank. "Is this the place?" Baker did not reply. He kept his eye on the edge of the river, saw a sandy shelf jutting out of the jungle. Guided the canoe to that spot and beached it. Climbed out. Took the bowline and lashed it to a nearby tree. With Scully and Doyle rising slowly and Kovac fighting the current to make it to shore, Baker stepped several yards into the jungle, looked around -- and only then did he speak. "Yes," he said. "We're about half a mile away." * * * Scully began to unload the biohazard equipment, unzipping two of the plastic envelopes and pulling out the hooded suits. The rubbery fabric was slippery in her nervous hands. Her heart was pounding but she didn't know why. It felt as if the jungle was holding its breath. Beneath the canopy, where it was marginally cooler, some stray whorls of mist still enhaloed the broad trunks, muting the violent colors of the flowers and draping the ground in gray fog. The loose, sandy earth was warm but damp. The sky was cloudy. This did not diminish the heat but stifled it, dampened it, made it less dazzling and more palpable on the skin. Haniver stepped onto the bank, squatted beside her. "Ready?" Scully asked. "Of course," Haniver said. But she was pale. "Does the forest feel strange here, Scully?" she asked, looking around at the trees. "Does it feel different to you?" "Yeah." "The air is wrong." Haniver paused, as if she were trying to find an adequate analogy. "Once I worked on a homicide case where four men had been walled up inside a church basement. They had enough air, but no food or water. In the end, they ate each other. Afterwards we took bleach and disinfected the room, but you still could smell it. You could smell what had happened there. That's what it feels like now." Haniver shivered despite the heat. Removed her life jacket. "Okay, suit me up first." As the others watched in pensive silence, Haniver donned the biohazard suit. It came in several pieces, first a loose jumpsuit, its zipper sealed with velcro and an adhesive flap, then boots, boot covers, heavy gloves. Bending down to pick up the respirator, Haniver found that any physical exertion rendered the suit suffocatingly hot. Perhaps an inch of air lay between her skin and the impregnated paper lining. It soon rose to sauna temperature. "Christ," she said, sweating. "I should have gone into another line of work." "We're not taking any chances," Scully replied, putting on her own suit. She took a last swallow from her canteen, pulled the hood down across her face, leaving only her eyes visible. Her voice was muffled when she spoke. "This is a third-level chemical weapons situation. Like it or not, the suit goes with the job." "That doesn't mean that the equipment isn't a pain in the ass. I designed half of these suits myself -- I know what they're meant to do -- but I'd still kill for a piece of ice." Doyle, standing next to the boats, offered his own brand of commiseration. "Look on the bright side, Haniver. Maybe you'll sweat off some of those unsightly extra pounds." Instead of responding, Haniver strapped on a communications headset and tossed the receiver to Doyle. "Check the reception," she said. "Am I coming in clear?" Doyle fiddled with the knobs. "Yeah." "Good." Haniver's voice buzzed through the radio. "Go fuck yourself, then." She opened a case, removed two gray devices like handheld vacuum cleaners. Their snouts were blunt and triangular. An indicator light on one end flashed green. "Know what these are, Scully?" she asked. "Electronic noses. I've used them before." "They've been programmed with the molecular signatures of two dozen lethal chemical compounds, blister agents, toxin agents -- whatever we could think of. We had to guess. But if any lethal substances are present above a few parts per million, the light will flash red." After all had been readied and their equipment had been checked and double-checked, the women were ready to enter the forest. Almost. Scully handed the electronic nose to Mulder, then used both hands to secure the respirator unit around her neck. Switched it on. A soft hissing filled the hood; she took a breath, tasted warm, stale air. Her eyeholes fogged up almost immediately. Stepping forward, Mulder pulled the sidearm from his shoulder holster and handed it to her. "Take it," he said. "Just in case." Scully took the pistol in her glove-clumsied grip. For one moment, their fingertips brushed. "Here's hoping that I won't need to use it," she replied. "Here's hoping." Then Mulder turned to Haniver, his face impossible to read. "Take care of yourself, Jenny. I wouldn't want to lose you here in Suriname." "I wouldn't want to give you the satisfaction," Haniver said, smiling. She strapped her big knife to her side, ran through a mental checklist. "Where are the auto-injectors?" "Here." Kovac pressed a plastic syringe into the palm of her hand. It was ribbed and cylindrical, a stout yellow tab jutting from one end. "This is a Swedish model," he said. "It contains HI-6 and atropine. If you suspect that you have been exposed to a nerve agent, jam it into your thigh and squeeze the trigger. It could save your life." "Thanks," said Haniver. "Here's hoping we won't need to use these, either." And so she and Scully stepped beneath the trees. The four men watched until the women had gone too far to be seen, the all-encompassing dimness of the jungle gradually devouring their rubber-suited bodies; afterwards, uneasy, they paced alongside the canoes, pitching stones into the river, listening to the radio, waiting for a sign. It was the longest hike of Scully's life. Twenty feet in, she was quite willing to turn back. The sweat trickled down her face and neck, along the sides of her body. Whenever she tried to wipe her goggles, they clouded over again before she could take another six steps. The respirator weighed heavily on her chest. Around her, the forest lay in primal darkness. Indistinct shapes seemed to writhe just outside her field of vision. Her hood and the breathing apparatus created a conch shell effect, the air around her ears throbbing with murmurs of crinkling fabric and latex grinding against latex. Her ant-bites itched. Worst of all, she had to pee. Knowing that it was a nervous reaction did not lessen the pressure on her bladder. Then there was the thought of what they might be approaching. If Haniver had similar problems, she hid them well. Her eyes were veiled, focusing on her feet as she and Scully trudged onward. Conversation was almost impossible. Fifteen minutes passed with only one brief exchange: "Did you and Mulder ever date?" "Yep." Scully might have asked more, but was abruptly silenced by a light tap against the top of her hood. Then another. Another. Looking up, her first, irrational thought was of the ants -- but then she saw the drops spattering in starbursts before her eyes, the thick globules falling with tiny splashes to the ground. She groaned inwardly. "It's raining," she said. "And I thought this day couldn't get any worse," said Haniver, the sound of her voice almost obliterated by the drumming of the drops. "I'm worried that this will affect the readings." "Could it be a problem?" "Yes. Maybe. I don't know. The water won't hurt the noses, but it might make trace chemicals more difficult to detect." She trailed off, listening to someone on the headset. She nodded. "I'll ask her. Scully, you feel like going further?" Standing like an anthropomorphic slug beneath the rain that now poured down in earnest, Scully said, "I'm not turning back now." "Good. Neither am I." Now their progress had all the slimy frustration of a paralytic dream. The water turned the eroded soil beneath their feet into a kind of slush, the timid silt making footing unsure even as they sank into the mire, forcing them to move even more slowly than before. The storm had a suffocating physical presence, thousands of tepid fingers striking their goggles and ricocheting off in microdroplets and making it impossible to see more than a few feet ahead. Inside the suit, Scully could smell the sour tang of rubber. She felt as if she were walking on the back of some predatory beast, its flanks heaving beneath her: and suddenly the image of Albert DeFillips came to mind, the dead man lying beneath the copal trees, his pants full of shit, his lungs full of the black mucus that had risen in his throat and choked him to death... A chain-link fence loomed out of the fog with a ghostly suddenness. Scully halted before it, her heart thudding. Looking up, she saw a sign. Her eyeholes swimming with rain, she was barely able to make it out, the red stenciled letters running like blood in the rippling water: BIOFUELS FEEDSTOCK DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM, they said. And below that, in blue: UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY. * * * "We made it," Haniver said into her mouthpiece. "We're at the fence. Over." Her headpiece crackled as Kovac responded. "Good. Keep going to your right and you should come to a swinging gate chained with a padlock. Let us know when you arrive. Over." Haniver turned to Scully and motioned for her to follow. The other FBI agent was slow to respond, her eyes fixed on what lay beyond the fence: row after row of smooth-limbed trees, serial numbers carved into the trunks of each. Somber, uniformly spaced. The brownish-gray bark of some had been peeled off in rectangular strips, leaving exposed sections of lighter cambium, as if the trees had been flayed alive. Copal. Trees of heaven. The gate stood fifty yards away. Walking parallel to the plantation edge, her left hand brushing against the fence, Haniver scanned the ground with the electronic nose. No results yet. But she would find something sooner or later. The downpour didn't concern her greatly. Despite the apprehensions she had voiced to Scully, Haniver was aware that rain's reputation for cleansing was greatly exaggerated. There were fields in Europe, she knew, where pockets of mustard and nerve gas from World War I could still be found, occasionally killing cows that wandered too far out onto the moor; the poison had lingered on throughout eighty years of wind and rain and snow. These men had died only a few days ago, making it probable that some deadly residue still remained. Not even a tropical storm could change that fact. At the same time, though, substances could still be sluiced from place to place -- always downhill. For that reason, she had requested and memorized a radiotopographical map of the facility, shades of gray indicating elevations to the nearest hundredth of an inch. Ground was always irregular. There were always depressions, inclinations in the soil, places where dissolved chemicals would collect. Haniver planned to sift through these places with a fine sieve. Knowing this didn't make their prospects any more certain, however. There was no indication of what they might find. Autopsies had revealed little of value; Baker had provided nothing of importance, beyond a few photographs. This was the first truly scientific inquiry into the situation. Meaning that certain standards had to be upheld. Haniver glanced behind her. "Scully. Remember to tread softly. We're treating this as a crime scene." "I'm aware of that," Scully said crossly. "But remember -- if your nose flashes red, get the hell out of here." "Which is what the reindeers said to Rudolph." They were at the gate. Beyond the barrier stood concrete buildings, metal roofs shrieking tinnily as raindrops coursed over their corrugated surfaces. Beneath her feet, the ground was gritty and soft. Haniver shifted uneasily in place and announced their location. A moment later, Kovac's voice buzzed over her earphones: "All right, open the padlock. The combination is 13-37-39. Over." Haniver reached for the dial, fumbled at it with her gloved hands. It took two tries before she succeeded. The lock undone, she removed it, unwound the chain and let it fall to the mud with a dull clank. Lifted the hasp. Pushed the gate open. It yielded easily, its lower edge describing a shallow arc in the soil; Haniver stepped back but the gate's momentum kept it opening, yawning further inward until it collided, clanging, with the inner side of the barrier. An obscene shiver went through the fence. It made her jump. Haniver waited for her nervousness to subside, but it did not. Instead, she thought of DeFillips sinking into the dirt beneath the copal trees, the emptiness of his face, his eyes without pupils -- and what they might have seen just before their sight was blotted out forever. But such thoughts accomplished nothing. Haniver knew this as well as anyone. Side by side, she and Scully entered the plantation. * * * The first thing Haniver noticed was the quality of the light. Despite the storm and the overcast sky, stepping from the forest into the BFDP compound made an enormous difference in the visual nature of her surroundings. With the canopy removed, the perpetual twilight of the hylaea was replaced by flat chalky luminescence. The turbulent darkness of the jungle was one thing; the two-dimensional pallor of this plantation was quite another. The only spots of brightness were the small orange flags that had been staked at several places in the soil. Under certain circumstances, the gaudy squares of plastic might have seemed cheerful. But Haniver knew their true significance, and was chilled by it. Each flag indicated the spot where Baker had found a dead body. A trio of such markers clustered close together by her feet. She'd seen the photographs, could match them with the tags without difficulty. Here Baker had found the first corpses: three men struggling toward the gate, cut down in mid-step by some unseen force that had left them dead and convulsing as they tried to flee. She knelt and swept the nose along the ground. Nothing. "All right," she said, turning to Scully. "We'll do this systematically. First the buildings, then the surrounding area. We've got two dormitories, a kitchen, a lab and refinery, the nursery, the storage area and the communications shed. Take your pick." "I'll do lab, nursery and storage." Scully pointed in the direction she planned to take. "Those three on the right. How much time will it take to scan each?" "I'd guess maybe ten minutes apiece. I'll meet you back here in half an hour." Scully lifted the pistol. "If I find a trace of anything suspicious, I'll step outside and discharge a single round into the sky. That will be our signal to evacuate as quickly as possible. Agreed?" "Agreed." The two women separated. There was a narrow gravel path leading to the barracks where the BFDP researchers had lived and worked; beyond the dormitories sat the demolished communications shed, and beyond that the copal trees, their solemn ranks extending for more than a mile into the savannah. It was a fairly small plantation, Haniver realized. Sweeping the entire compound would probably take less than three hours. Inside her hood, Baker's voice crackled over the radio. "Haniver," he said. "I want you to describe everything you see. Give a running commentary. Over." Haniver complied. "I'm approaching the living quarters, checking the path along the way," she said, speaking in a low monotone. "Readings so far have been negative. No sign of any toxic substance. The rain is coming down hard, same as where you are, I assume." "We're huddled under the canoe. Over." "I'm at the first building. Give me a second to check the exterior." She lifted the biosensor, scanned the wall before her. Found nothing. Moving around the periphery, she repeated her search and came to the same conclusion at all four sides, the quartet of sweeps taking her five minutes all told. "Results still negative. I'm going in." The building was forty feet long, windows set into the cinderblocks every ten feet. Pressing her face-shield against the nearest pane of glass and blocking the light with her free hand, she was able to make out the interior. "I'm looking through the window. I can see the desk, a bed. A Magritte poster on the wall. 'Natural Graces,' the caption says." "That was Lifton's room," said Baker. "Keep talking." "I'm at the door. It's unlocked. Correction: there is no lock." She frowned and moved inside, stepping over the low concrete stoop and across the threshold. The sound of rain echoed resoundingly, magnified by the roof above. "I'm indoors. There's a central corridor stretching in front of me. Three doors on either side of the hall. The walls seem very thin." Haniver saw a light switch, tried it. "No electricity." "We'll need to get the generator restarted ourselves. How's the ambient light?" "Dim. I can see all right, though. There's a window at the far end of the hall. The interior appears undamaged. All the doors are closed." Haniver reached out, tried one knob, another. "Locked, too." "Check the floor. I left the keys in the hallway." "Got it. Unlocking door number one." Haniver stepped inside the first room, quickly took in the monastic furnishings, the unmade bed, the small fan, the desk cluttered with papers. A lathered razor sat on the windowsill. A pair of pants lay draped over the back of a chair. "It's cramped, maybe eight by twelve feet. No sign of evacuation. I'd say that he was planning to return soon." She scanned the room. The closet. "It's clean. I'm moving on." The next cubicle was unfurnished, but she checked the floor and bare walls anyway, again coming up with nothing. The fear in her stomach dissolved a little. She moved to the next room. Nothing. Across the hall. Nothing. The bathrooms, claustrophobic and green, with chemical toilets. Nothing. The fear was almost entirely gone. She'd only seen a fraction of the compound, but results thus far were enough to make her doubt the presence of anything deadly. When the fifth room yielded a similarly innocuous reading, her nervous anticipation was supplanted by a strange annoyance. If there were no poisons here, there was nothing for her to report, nothing for her to analyze; and thus she was worse than useless. For the first time, she allowed herself to wonder what would happen if she came back empty-handed. She didn't think that the men she was dealing with would be especially forgiving. If she failed to bring something back to Washington, her career could be fucked forever. Haniver moved into the last room. Here at last something was different: the window was open. Rain blew inside in periodic gusts, dripping down the desk and soaking the thin carpet beneath. An open book beneath the sill was already waterlogged, its pages bloated with moisture. Haniver stepped inside. The rug squished under her feet. She was about to shut the window before thinking better of it. "It's a crime scene," she said to herself. "Tread softly." "What was that?" Baker asked over the radio. "Uh, I'm in the fourth room. It's pretty wet in here. Some books, some folded garments on the bed. Not much else. I'll just sniff for hazardous substances and move on." Haniver swept the electronic nose across the ceiling, the walls, the bed, the desk, reacting without surprise as the light at the tip of the device remained stubbornly green. She was about to leave when she remembered the closet. Turned back. Saw that the closet door was slightly ajar. She opened it. A deformed human child sat inside. Its wrinkled face was red, its fanged mouth dripping with blood. It rose, fixed two great rheumy eyes on her, and shrieked. Haniver shrieked back. She stumbled backwards, hands before her face, striking her head against the wall as the hideous child leapt with frightening agility onto the desk, scattering papers and knocking the sodden book to the floor. It was coming for her. No, wait -- she tried to regain control -- no, it was climbing onto the windowsill. Baring yellowed fangs, it crawled partway outside, howled at her once more, and was gone before she could recover her senses. "...happened?" Mulder's voice was buzzing through her headphones. "Jenny? Are you all right?" A second passed before Haniver was able to respond. Her right hand clutched the biosensor in a white-knuckled grip, her fingernails digging into her palm through the gloves. She remembered a line of Dante. Forced herself to relax. "A monkey," she finally managed. "Holy Jesus Christ. It was only a monkey." Doyle's voice came faintly over the headset: "Must have been some monkey." "Fuck you, Doyle." Haniver straightened up, checked her suit for rips or tears. "It was in the fucking closet. Jesus." She groped for the closet door, opened it again. In the corner was a half-eaten piece of fruit, red and dripping juice. The same liquid she'd seen around the monkey's mouth. Not blood, juice. She'd simply surprised a bald-faced silver monkey that had been eating its lunch while taking convenient refuge from the rain. Nothing strange or disturbing. "I hate this place," she said. Baker seemed impressed when he heard the description. "Bald face and silver fur? Sounds like a uakari -- very rare species. You're lucky to have seen one." "I'm thrilled to know that." Haniver paused, caught her breath. "Actually, it's a good omen. Primates and humans have similar metabolisms; nerve agents affect us in the same way. If monkeys can live here safely, it's a safe bet that whatever killed those men is long gone." A crackle of static, then Kovac's voice. "Be as it may, I still want you to go over the rest of the compound." "Right," Haniver said, stepping back into the hallway and shutting the door behind her. Evaluating things. Her knees still trembled slightly; her head still hurt where she'd bumped it against the wall. The pain made her irritable, but the memory of the fear was worse. She didn't like to be afraid, didn't like to lose control of her emotions. Worst of all was the fact that the others had been indirect witness to her failing. Now, grimly, Haniver swore to never panic again as she just had. To keep her weaker instincts in check. To show the others just how cold-hearted a professional she could be. Resolution made, Haniver said: "I'll get started on the other buildings now. It should be about twenty more minutes before Scully and I are finished." She paused. "But I think I already know what we're going to find." * * * Nothing. The plantation was clean. Even after Scully and Haniver had radioed for the men to join them, even after Mulder and Doyle and Kovac and Baker had brought the equipment and suited up and gone over the trees and buildings and surrounding savannah inch by inch, section by section, not a molecule of any lethal substance could be found -- not in the runoff, not in low-lying areas, not indoors, not outdoors. Even when the rain stopped and the noses were recalibrated -- nothing. Haniver pretended relief, but in reality she was bitterly disappointed. She was down to the zero again. Kovac didn't say anything, but she could see the sour satisfaction in his face; briefly she suspected that he had found something and hadn't told the others, so she went back in secret and swept his sector of the plantation herself, waiting for the light to flash red. But she had come up empty. And now Haniver wasn't sure what to do next. There was still her theory about the curare, Haniver reminded herself. It was less than spectacular, true, but at least it was something concrete, something to offer the goons in Washington: the best poisons were natural ones, she would remind them, and the best goddamned neurotoxin the military ever found was the venom of the blue-ringed octopus -- so why should curare be any less useful? So she spent the rest of the day searching the outer regions of the plantation for signs of Indian presence, looking for vines and shrubs that might be used to make poison, for the telltale remains of campfires or lean-tos or anything else that might buttress her explanation of the disaster. But the surrounding forest was maddeningly untouched. If Indians had visited the area in the past few days, her eyes were too unskilled to see it. Baker might be able to tell, but Haniver wasn't ready to recruit Baker just yet. It was late at night when Haniver finally gave up, having unearthed nothing but more frustration. There was no sign of any human presence in the jungle. And then there was that photograph. That satellite image with the strange dark blur in the northeast corner. Haniver still didn't know what to make of that. But when it was dark and she knew that she was alone, she set up her video transmitter and beamed a message across the ocean, explaining the situation to her contact as he lit a cigarette and looked at her with his strange dead eyes. In the end, he suggested that she consult Mulder. * * * Other members of the team spent the day in similarly insular pursuits. After restarting the generator -- which burned copal oil for fuel -- and checking the electricity throughout the camp, Baker wandered the compound in a state of moody introspection, eyes veiled and thoughtful as he examined the orange flags, remembering each victim, each stiffened body in his arms. In less than an hour he had made a complete circuit of the markers, as if he were retracing the stations of the Cross. "I'm waiting for something," he said. "What do you mean?" asked Scully. She had joined him a few minutes ago, taking samples of the soil, labeling the vials and sliding them into her pocket: soon the tubes would go into the centrifuge, spinning to fraction out their components, separating silt from sediment and perhaps leaving a few grains of something deadly at the bottom of each. "I'm not sure what I mean," Baker said, his voice more bemused than sad. "Back when I was in Paramaribo, whenever I thought about coming back to the plantation, I would get the shakes. I was convinced that when I finally got here again, I would break down -- that I would see these flags or someone's pipe on the windowsill and start tearing my hair out. But that hasn't happened yet. It's strange." "It isn't so strange." "Do you think I'm repressed?" "Not necessarily." Scully spooned up a gram of dust. "There have been times when I've returned to places where something terrible happened in the past, expecting the dead to rise, the memories to start flooding back. But usually the flood doesn't come. Not even a tingle." She labeled the tube with a felt-tip pen, pocketed it. "A place is just a place. The only ghosts are the ones we bring with us." "Do you really believe that?" Scully rose. "If there's one thing I've learned, it's that houses aren't haunted; people are haunted." "Did the FBI teach you that?" "No, I read it in a paperback." Baker smiled but didn't reply. He could still feel the lump of jaguar's flesh in his chest, as if it had lodged somewhere around his heart and refused to descend any further. He had not eaten much of anything since then, and the taste was still in his mouth: the fierce dark tang of the meat, the blood like liquid copper. Baker wondered briefly if he had gone insane. Certainly that had been an insane act, the blood on his teeth, kneeling alongside that weathered stump with the dead cat before him. And yet the flesh of the jaguar seemed to have done something. Baker looked at Scully and asked himself whether she would understand. He liked Scully, was even attracted to her on some level, but concluded that she was probably not the sort of person in whom he could confide. She would worry about the feline immunodeficiency virus, insist that he take some antibiotics: which, he admitted to himself, might not be such a bad idea under the circumstances.... Baker stopped. Doyle was sprinting down the gravel path, hand outstretched, carrying a tiny object in his open palm. He wore a strange pair of goggles, his eyes swimming behind thick lenses. He slid to a halt before them, sides heaving. "Check this out, Kovac," he said. "I'm Baker." Doyle raised his goggles. "Oh, hello. I can't see a goddamned thing with these lenses, you understand." He extended his hand again. "Check it out anyway." Scully examined the small brown lump. "It's a chrysalis." "You're goddamned right it's a chrysalis," he said. " And you know what that means? It means we've got lepidoptera invading the plantation." He fumed, turned to Baker. "I told you the fucking pesticides wouldn't work." "These butterflies began to infest the trees last week," Baker explained to Scully. "That's why I was heading to Paramaribo when the accident happened." He took the chrysalide into his own hand, felt its dryness, its insubstantiality. "Do you think this could be an allelochemical problem?" he asked Doyle, bracing for the explosion he knew would follow. "Shut up," Doyle said. "All right? Just do me a favor and shut the fuck up." "It was an innocent question." "You know the answer. This can't be an allelochemic, because if it is, we're all fucked for life." Doyle took back the chrysalis. "I'm dealing with this invasion myself. Let these bastards build their day-care centers all over my trees. I'll kill 'em all, and let God sort them out." He gave a mock salute and marched away. When Doyle was out of range, Baker said, "He gets a little tense sometimes." "I've noticed," Scully said. A short pause. "What the hell was that about?" "It's an investment thing. If the infestation is due to an allelochemical deficiency, the DOE could scrap this entire project." "I'm not sure I understand." "It's a bioengineering problem," Baker explained. "When you tinker with the genetics of an organism, like we did with the copal trees, you always get some random side effects that you can't predict." "Like what?" "Well, plants defend themselves against their enemies using allelochemics, byproducts of metabolic processes that end up stored in cellular tissue. Usually these are just random molecules that don't do anything. But occasionally they'll have some defensive value, something in their properties that kills ants or butterflies, for example. So the plant survives and passes the allelochemic on to its offspring. It's an elegant example of evolution at work." Scully began to head towards the next orange flag. "So you're saying that these trees may lack a defense compound." "Exactly. There's a chance that when we modified the trees to produce higher levels of hydrocarbons, we crippled their ability to produce an allelochemic that protected them against certain insects. Butterflies which couldn't lay eggs on copal trees in the wild can now devour the leaves to their hearts' content." "And Doyle is pissed off." "For good reason. There's no way we'll be able to sell this technology to Brazil if an invasion of butterflies is enough to bring production to a halt. People are looking for a dependable energy source, not something that goes to hell every time an insect swarm comes along." Scully knelt beside the final flag. "So if this is a real problem, what happens?" "We start again, I guess. It doesn't matter much to me -- I've got no personal stake in the success or failure of this project -- but Doyle wants to retire before his thirtieth birthday, and BFDP is his golden ticket. If it craps out because of a few butterflies, he'll have lost at least a million dollars, maybe more." "Jesus," said Scully. "The past few days must have been hard on him." Baker knelt alongside her. "They've been hard on all of us," he said. Scully leaned down to retrieve one last sample of dust; and as she did, Baker caught a glimpse of the back of her neck. The red bites were still there. He had suffered a few of these welts himself when he ran beneath the hail of ants and pushed Scully into the river; and for the first time, Baker asked himself what had compelled him to do that. The act seemed to have risen from outside his own courageousness, or lack of it. He realized now that there had been no choice in the matter. Perhaps the jaguar's flesh had done something after all. * * * Night descended upon the rain forest. A chorus of flutelike whistles heralded the darkness, swelling voice by voice until the entire jungle filled with song. "It is the great tinamou," Kovac said, listening raptly to the music. "Arguably the homeliest bird in the world. But at sunset it sings like an angel. One bird calls and soon others respond. So for a short time their loneliness is broken." At Mulder's insistence, the team prepared to sleep only in rooms that had not been occupied before, thus avoiding contamination of the evidence. Only four cubicles were available. After some wheeling and dealing, Haniver and Scully were given their own quarters, with the men pairing up separately -- Mulder and Doyle, Baker and Kovac. There were hooks in the walls from which hammocks could be slung. They flung open the windows and turned on the fans, but the heat remained almost unbearable. The men stripped down to their shorts. Mulder opted to wear his shoulder holster to bed; it chafed against his burnt skin. He tried to sleep, but his mind remained abuzz with the problems that the day had presented. He lay sweating, listening to the noises of the night. Tinamous. The high chatter of monkeys. Doyle said something. Mulder stirred and groaned to himself. "What's that?" The geneticist's soft voice came spiraling out of the darkness. "Truth or dare," said Doyle. "I always pick truth." "Somehow that doesn't surprise me. Let me get right to the point: I want you to level with me, man to man, with none of the doubletalk bullshit I get from the others. You're here for a reason, aren't you?" Mulder opened his eyes, stared up at the ceiling. "We're all here for a reason." "I want you to be straight with me. Don't think I don't know your reputation. I've been talking with Haniver, and she and I agree that you wouldn't be here unless you thought that something pretty fucking strange had gone down in the rain forest. So what is it?" "Listen, whatever Haniver told you -- " "Forget what Haniver told me, man. If you think I give a shit about how crazy your ideas sound, you're wrong. I'll go quid pro quo. Tell me something nuts and I'll top it." Mulder rolled over onto his side and said it. "I have a hunch that the BFDP researchers may have been killed by extraterrestrials conducting some kind of experiment in the jungle." A long silence. "Shit," said Doyle. "I can't compete with that." Mulder was groping around for something to throw when Doyle spoke again. "But hey, I admire you for not being bashful about it. At least you come right out and say what's on your mind. That's more than most people can manage. I mean, fuck it. I don't represent myself with one hundred percent honesty -- you can't get ahead in this world without telling a shitload of lies -- but I respect those who do." "You sound like a romantic." "I am a romantic. Can't you tell?" Doyle folded his arms behind his head and leaned back into his hammock's springy mesh. "You want to hear my story?" "What story?" "Quid pro quo, remember? Let's put our fucking cards on the table and see if you're crazier than I am." He launched into the story. "This happened maybe three years ago. It was a lousy night. I'd gotten drunk out of my fucking mind because of some girl and I was wandering the streets. I staggered into a movie theater, ended up in the front row. I just needed someplace to rest. But they were showing this really fucked up silent film, a movie about Joan of Arc -- " "Wait -- what?" Mulder asked, unclear about where Doyle's story was headed. "It was the creepiest thing I'd ever seen. Boring as hell, full of camera angles and all kinds of pretentious shit. But something about this woman got to me. The actress playing Joan. She wasn't pretty, she looked like a ten-year-old, but something about her eyes hit me hard. I wanted to climb up on the screen and take her in my arms and comfort her. After the movie was over I sat through it for a second time, just looking at her. Later I found that she was an Italian actress who had been dead for fifty years -- she only made this one movie, for chrissake -- but I fell in love with her anyway. I fell in love with a dead woman on a movie screen." He was silent for a moment. "So what do you think?" "I think we should call it a draw," Mulder said. A knock prevented Doyle from responding. The two men looked at each other for a moment; then Doyle leapt down from his hammock, strode barefootedly to the door and opened it. A lone figure stood silhouetted in the hallway. It was Haniver. She had a flashlight in her right hand. There was an odd plastic attachment covering the lens. "Hello," said Doyle. "Hello," Haniver said. "I've got something to show you." They viewed the satellite photos in silence. Haniver projected them onto the darkened wall, scrolling through the microfilm frame by frame until the final photograph shone before their eyes: Mulder stared at the shadowy patch above the northeast corner of the plantation and felt a strange sense of vertigo invade his body, as if he were falling into that blackness. Because something had been flying above the plantation. "Where did you get these?" Mulder finally asked. "It doesn't matter," said Haniver. "Just tell me what you think this shape is." "You already know what I think." "The shadow of an alien spacecraft?" Haniver asked. "Fine. Let's run with it." "What?" said Doyle. Haniver clicked off the flashlight, plunging the room into complete darkness. "Listen, right now I'm willing to accept any hypothesis, no matter how absurd it may seem. I've got no ideological scruples to maintain. I just want to solve this case." "That's a noble sentiment," Mulder said. Even as he said this, Mulder heard a thumping sound coming from the floor. He realized that Haniver was tapping her foot against the rug in impatience. "The hell with noble sentiment," she said. "I'm trying to close the books on a multiple homicide that seems to have everyone bewildered, except for you. If I need to take a walk on the spooky side to conclude this investigation, I will." Her disembodied voice was tense and all business. This wasn't right. Haniver was still tapping her foot. "Let's cut to the chase," Mulder said. "What do you want from me?" "I want you to work with me, to trust me." Haniver was still tapping her foot. "This case is too important for us to grope separately towards the finish line. I share my evidence with you, and I expect you to reciprocate." Suddenly she turned to Doyle. "Please stop tapping your goddamned foot -- it's driving me insane...." "Me?" Doyle's voice sounded confused. "Mulder's doing it, for Christ's sake." Mulder froze. The rapping sound continued, growing more relentless in the silence. A droplet of sweat trickled down the side of his face. "Uh-oh," he said. Haniver stood slowly. She extended a hand, searching blindly for the light switch. Found it. Flipped it up. The fluorescent tubes flickered, blinked, then flared brightly, etching the details of the room into stark relief. What they revealed turned Mulder's blood to ice. A snake lay coiled in the middle of the floor. The fer-de-lance was nearly four feet long, a glistening pattern of black and brown diamonds cascading across its narrow back. It thumped its tail against the carpet, dully, again and again, as if it were pounding out the bossa-nova rhythm to a song only it could hear: Tap. Tap. Tap. Its eyes were slits. When it opened its mouth, Mulder could see two great fangs, rows of smaller teeth, pink tongue flicking in and out to taste the air. Mulder reached for his gun. Haniver saw the movement. "No. You won't be able to get a clean shot." She glanced at Doyle, saw him backing into a corner, his face white. Looked down and saw a blanket at her feet. The open window. The snake. When it bit you, its venom corroded your blood vessels and made your flesh rot. Necrosis. Instant decomposition around the wound. Without antivenin you were as good as dead. Haniver remembered the monkey, remembered losing control, remembered her own fear and humiliation: and knew what she had to do. Gritting her teeth, Haniver bent down and took the two nearest corners of the blanket into her hands. Moving cautiously toward the snake, which still lay in the middle of the room, perhaps confused or blinded by the light, Haniver held her breath, crept forward until she stood directly above the fer-de-lance -- and flung the blanket across it. It exploded in a rage of hissing and spitting, wriggling madly, but she seized it through the fabric, felt it spasming, its lithe body squirming obscenely in her arms. She rushed across the room with the hideous bundle, ran to the window and threw the snake outside, blanket and all. That was all it took. Haniver closed the window. She was trembling all over. "I hate this place," she said. Without thinking, Mulder stepped forward and put his arms around her. He was shaking even harder than she was. He felt the tremor in his voice, tried to conquer it: "Don't do anything like that ever again. I mean it. You have no idea how dangerous -- " "I knew." Haniver pulled away from him and went to the window, pressing her forehead against the glass. The blanket lay outside on the ground. Empty. The snake was gone. Her heart still thundered, but there was something like exhilaration building inside her. "Vedi la 'l nostro avversaro," she said softly. Doyle was in the corner, pale and sweating. "Holy mother of God," he finally said. "How the fuck did that happen?" He took a wobbling step forward, made his way to the window. "How did that thing climb up? How did it get inside?" "Forget how," Haniver said, moving into the hallway. "Right now, I'm more interested in another question." * * * "Why?" They were in Kovac and Baker's room. All six members of the team had been assembled, Scully and Doyle on hammocks, Baker and Kovac leaning against the walls, Mulder and Haniver standing alongside the door. Outside, the rain lashed against the roof and windows, the drops rattling down the drainpipes. Kovac lit a cigarette, puffed it thoughtfully. "I will grant you that it is strange," he said. "My experience is that jungle animals are not normally inclined to invade human dwellings. But so far there have been two such encounters -- the monkey that Haniver discovered this morning, and this episode with the fer-de-lance. It is enough to make one wonder." "No kidding," said Doyle. "I don't mean to impose my personal problems on the rest of you, but I fucking hate snakes. I have enough trouble already without having to deal with shit like this...." "Are you aware of anything that might lead to such unusual behavior among the animals?" Scully asked, ignoring him. "A change in the environment, maybe," said Baker. "When animals begin to act in bizarre ways, the cause can usually be traced back to some irregularity in the food chain, or the introduction of an alien species." "Like man?" said Mulder. "It's possible. Our policy is to affect the environment as little as possible -- we don't cut down existing tree cover or touch the water supply -- but it happens. These projects always have unpredictable effects on the rest of the rain forest." Kovac agreed. "These animals are sensitive to any change. You may see this forest as some eternal system, but it is not: it is an extraordinarily complicated balance between animals, plants, men and climate. Upset one factor and it all comes crashing down. And it happens. I remember one such occasion...." He tilted his head back, watching as the gray sworls of his cigarette smoke rose toward the ceiling. His voice assumed a nostalgic tone. "Thirty years ago I was working on Barro Colorado Island, in Panama. It was an El Nino year. During the rainy season, two fruiting peaks usually occur, periods when the herbivores feed and fatten up in preparation for the annual dry spell. That year, for some reason, one of the fruiting peaks did not take place. Less than one-third of the usual amount of fruit was produced. It was a famine. The food was gone, the foragers starved, and the predators starved with them. The rain forest became a tomb." He flicked away ash, glanced out the window. "The bodies were everywhere. Monkeys, agoutis, porcupines, jaguars, sloths -- all dead, lying on the ground. The vultures could not keep up with the surplus." Kovac smiled to himself. "It was at this time that the monkeys began to attacking the camp. It was war. They were desperate. They discovered how to open the doors, invaded the kitchens and storage cabinets, went after bananas and bread, tore open bags of flour, leaped on the tables as we ate. Completely unnatural behavior. Hunger drove them to it. Perhaps fear as well." "You think something similar is happening here?" Haniver asked, studying his face carefully. "I do not know. For two years this team has monitored the condition of the forest, and it has found nothing strange. Without further information, I would not care to hazard a guess." "So it could be anything." "Yes," said Kovac. "Nearly anything at all." * * * The next morning dawned cold: overnight, temperatures had dropped nearly fifty degrees. Scully awoke, shivering, groping for a blanket that wasn't there. She tumbled out of her hammock and headed for the shower. The water was icy, pumped straight from the river with a bare handful of filters in between. She brushed her teeth, applied eyeliner, ran a comb through her damp hair and went outside, the mist embracing her like an impotent lover. Six o'clock. Haniver and Doyle sat in the kitchen with cups of coffee in their hands. It was a clean, cramped room with stainless-steel fittings and plastic cupboards filled with soup and bins of flour. Scully noticed that Doyle had donned a pair of high leather boots, tucking the ends of his jeans into thick socks. "Protection from snakes and scorpions," he said. "Let's just say I spent a restless evening." Scully poked through the cupboards for something to eat, finally settled on a package of ramen, breaking off the noodles and eating them raw. Haniver slid a mug of coffee in her direction. "We're spraying the trees for bugs today," she said. "You can come along if you like." Scully sipped from the mug, grimaced. It tasted like Haniver had found a pot of coffee that someone in the original team had made days ago. "Think you'll be able to cover the entire plantation?" "We're focusing on the worst of the damage," said Doyle. "It doesn't amount to more than maybe ten or twelve acres, tops. I mean, fuck it. We couldn't do much more than that if we wanted to. We're spraying by hand." He indicated the canisters of poison sitting near the door. Each had a nozzle-and-spigot assembly and a bulky gas mask. Scully shook out two pyridostigmine and diazepam tablets into her hand, swallowed them whole. "Love to join you, but I can't. Mulder is planning to search the compound, to dig up whatever evidence he can find. He wants me to come." Haniver nodded. "I know. I'd go along with him, but I need to monitor the pesticide dispersal, make sure that the chemicals don't interfere with my side of the investigation." She drained her coffee. Scully noticed that the big steel knife was strapped to Haniver's waist. "Mulder's been working since dawn, going over the compound with an electroscope, recording the atmospheric charges. Drawing a graph. He claims it will tell him something. He was at the communications booth last time I checked." "Thanks." She went outside. The communications booth stood three dozen yards away, half-covered by a yellow tarp. She lifted the plastic, went in. Mulder was kneeling with the electroscope, fiddling with the dials. The floor around him was strewn with broken chunks of concrete, shards of glass, bits of cement. In the midst of it all lay a pool of dried blood, an orange flag staked in the center. It looked like a strange tropical rose. "This was where he found James Lifton," Mulder said, not looking up. "The guy who sent the emergency transmission. Remember what he kept saying?" "Fire on the trees." Scully stepped over the greater portion of the damage, saw that Mulder had been sifting through the debris. "Find anything interesting?" "There are some unusual electromagnetic signatures, but nothing conclusive. I'm still looking for bits of paint, metal scratches, anything that might indicate what wrecked this building, but there's nothing here but blood and leaves." "But something smashed into it." "Right." Mulder stood. "I came out here yesterday with the UV lamp. There was no trace of nitroglycerin, no explosive residue. It was a brute force attack." He paused thoughtfully. "Someone or something wanted these men dead. Once it notices us, I suspect that it will feel the same way." "Is that really what you think?" "I'm not sure what I think. Quassapelagh said that death wears many faces in the forest, that I must learn to recognize them all. But what if there's only one face? One avatar? A single incarnation of death with infinitely many masks." "I don't know what you're talking about." They went outside. "Every culture has its unholy places," Mulder said. "There are countless civilizations on this planet, countless religions, countless modes of belief -- but each has its own concept of tainted ground, of places that must not be approached for the evil that grows there. What if this is such a place?" He watched as Haniver and Doyle headed for the trees of heaven, gas masks covering their faces. "There's something strange about this plantation. It feels like nothing here has changed for a million years. As if something has kept this area untouched while everything else sprouted and flourished around it, thriving, but careful to keep a distance." Scully shook her head. "I can't buy that. Even if there are haunted places, they don't become haunted until humans impose their own fears upon them. Left alone, the natural world doesn't cling to its ghosts: it selects, evolves and moves on." She looked at Mulder. "Besides, I thought you suspected alien activity." "I'm not so sure about that anymore," he said. * * * Haniver was spraying pesticides on a copal tree when the lowermost branch abruptly exploded. She'd glanced at it briefly, seen only a thick, blunt limb that someone had pruned, the stump eight inches long and jutting out at an odd angle: but when she brought the nozzle close, the bough burst open in a flutter of wings and feathers, detached itself from the trunk and flew rapidly away. Startled, she watched as the creature she'd taken to be part of the tree flapped towards Doyle, veered to the right and sailed into a clutch of trees. A moment later it was gone. "Didn't see that coming," Haniver said. It was nearly one o'clock in the afternoon. The pair had been working on the trees for upwards of six hours, trading spraying duties whenever they felt like it. Even with the masks, the stench of chemicals was overpowering. From the beginning, Doyle had bitched amiably about possible carcinogenic side effects, while Haniver had been more concerned with getting the smell out of her hair. Either way, the pesticides seemed to be doing their job. The chrysalides were curled and shriveling, falling to the earth like dry leaves. Doyle had been on his knees gathering specimens when the strange creature flew past him. Now he straightened up with a jerk. "What the hell was that?" "It was a bird. It was sitting on the trunk -- I thought it was part of the tree." He rose to his feet, eyes wary. "That's why this jungle bothers me. You look at something long enough, and it changes into something else. Nothing is what it fucking seems." He stopped and pointed over Haniver's shoulder. "There's another one." Haniver turned. It was thirty seconds before she saw what he was gesturing at, and when she did, she was not surprised that it had taken her so long: perched on the nearest tree of heaven sat a medium-sized bird, its feathers ranging from cream-colored to muddy brown. Its head, spine and tail were aligned precisely. The bird did not flutter, did not move a muscle. Its eyes were tightly closed. Frozen, barely breathing, its body rigid and straight, it easily passed for part of the tree -- an exquisite, bizarrely unsettling example of defensive camouflage. It made Haniver uneasy. The disguise was too perfect. Once her eyes adjusted to the mimicry, she could look at trees and see the birds hiding in plain sight, dotting limbs and trunks for acres around them. A silent army, omnipresent and unseen. She understood why it had made Doyle nervous. Even ordinary branches seemed suspicious now. It made you wonder what else was there. She focused on the butterflies. They flitted aimlessly from branch to branch, their narrow, elegant wings colored a dull orange. Only a handful of mature individuals could be seen; more common were their larvae, white and tan caterpillars with rows of blunt spines. "The adults won't come back until it's time to lay eggs," Doyle had said. "Copal trees don't have much attraction for mature butterflies -- they probably feed elsewhere, on nectar. They're only using the plantation as a nursery." "What species are they?" "Heliconids, maybe. I'm not sure. Most butterflies will concentrate on a single species of host plant. For Heliconids, it's the passion flower, always. Anything else is weird. Either this is a new species of butterfly or it's an existing variety that has adapted to feed on copal leaves, the sons of bitches. Which is possible. When you introduce a genetically-engineered organism into the wild, you'll usually put some new wrinkles into the food chain. It's annoying as hell, but it happens." Now Doyle knelt and gathered the fallen pupae. The chrysalides were brown, angular, with two winglike projections running along one end. When you picked them up, the ridges rubbed together, squeaking. Doyle regarded the sound with glee. "Listen to the bastards screaming. They know their days are numbered." "You used to be an entomologist," Haniver said. "Shouldn't you have more compassion for our six-legged friends?" "I'll let you in on a secret," he said, taking a small glassine envelope from his pocket and slipping the pupae inside. "Regardless of what you might believe, most entomologists aren't especially compassionate toward bugs. Look at me. I was a model youth. It was science that corrupted me. When a man decides to pursue a career in entomology, he won't stay sane for long. You can't spend twenty years skewering grasshoppers on cards and putting moths in the killing jar without losing some of your humanity. That's why I switched to genetics." "You're exaggerating." "I'm not. Read Theodor Reik sometime. He realized that it isn't sex that lies at the heart of psychological aberrations -- it's murder. The fear of committing murder is the source of all our neuroses. The kid jerking off in the bathroom doesn't feel guilty for complicated psychosexual reasons; he's afraid that his father will catch him in the act, forcing the kid to kill him and commit the sin of patricide." "That's great. But what does this have to do with deranged entomologists?" "Why are people afraid of bugs? It isn't because they pose a threat. It's because they're easy to kill. They're fragile. Squishable. You can destroy an insect's life without trying -- which is very unsettling to our delicate moral sensibilities. Murder, no matter how insignificant, always stains the spirit. We project our fears onto the objects of our wrath and imagine that they frighten us, when in truth we despise the depravity in our own souls. Which is why women are so terrified by crawly things -- they want to kill and are repelled by the thought." "That doesn't make sense," Haniver said. "I step on bugs all the time, and I'm not particularly afraid of them." "Maybe you're repressed," said Doyle straightfacedly. "I mean it. Hey, I'm not casting the first stone here. I've got problems. My grandmother was killed in Auschwitz and I stick moths in cyanide -- how's that for your knotty sense of Jewish guilt?" He paused as one of the butterflies lit on his shoulder, its wings brushing against his neck. He flicked it away absently. "Which is why many entomologists are totally fucked up, psychologically speaking," he concluded. "We anesthetize ourselves to our own nature. We pretend to be fascinated by insects when we're only concealing our revulsion beneath a different name." "I don't buy that." Haniver looked around her. Ranks of flat gray copal trunks extended for hundreds of yards on all sides -- but the surrounding jungle still loomed above them, branches embroidered heavily with vines and colorful growths until it seemed as if the jungle were knitting a cage around the entire plantation. A lone butterfly bobbed before her face. Haniver brushed it away. Strange apprehension rose in her gullet, sharp and insidious. Like sour wine. * * * They stood at the riverbank. It was early evening. The roar of howler monkeys rattled high in the treetops, mixed with the shriller cries of parrots and cicadas. Soon pacas would emerge, and moths. Perhaps jaguars as well. The news was anticlimactic and surprised neither of them. "I have received word from Paramaribo," said Kovac, removing his hat. "At seven o'clock this morning, Ferdinand Aquino seized control of the Surinamese government." Baker knew that there had been a transmission from the city, but Kovac had remained silent about the details until now. "How did it happen?" "It was a bloodless coup. He dispatched troops to the homes of key members of the National Assembly, surprised them while they were eating breakfast. We both know that Aquino had been planning something similar to this for years," he concluded. "But I am afraid this coup will present us with a number of problems." "Go ahead," said Baker, knowing what was coming. "Previous insurrections have crumbled at the first sign of intervention from America or the Netherlands. This time, Aquino is determined to see the coup to completion." Kovac ran a hand through his thinning hair. "Therefore, he has declared a no-fly zone above Paramaribo and the surrounding rain forest. The airports have been closed. Unauthorized planes will be shot down without warning...." "So we're stranded here." Kovac lit a cigarette, shook out the match. "For the moment." "For the moment?" Baker stared into Kovac's face. There was a faint trace of amusement there that set off alarm bells in his head: in a split second, everything seemed to fall into place. "What kind of deal did you make with him, Kovac?" he asked. "I am afraid I don't know what you mean." "Aquino spent two days pumping me for information about the project," said Baker. "I didn't give him a damned thing, but he released me anyway. Why?" Kovac looked at him calmly. "What do you think, Baker?" "I think that you sold us out," Baker said. "Aquino wouldn't cut his ties with America and the Netherlands unless he had something to fall back on. BFDP would fill that need. I think that you fed him the information in exchange for passage into the jungle. You told him everything just so he'd give you a head start at the plantation before he sent his troops to seize the compound." "He should arrive within the next four days." Kovac took one last drag, then dropped his cigarette to the ground, crushed it underfoot. "I always took you for an insightful man." "Maybe not insightful enough. I still don't know why you did it. What do you have to gain?" "Something greater than biofuel," said Kovac. In the evening light, Kovac's eyes were hidden by shadow. The projecting bone of his forehead made his expression difficult to read. "There are more important things at stake here than the outcome of one DOE project," he continued. "This glow is more interesting than either of us could ever have imagined. DeFillips knew. The first time it appeared, he and James Lifton chased it down to its source...." "How do you know that?" "I read it in his journal." The missing journal. Baker remembered the red notebook in DeFillips's front shirt pocket, the one that Mulder had tried so desperately to find. "You had it all this time." Kovac nodded. "I would advise you to forget about BFDP. The copal trees were a dead end in any case; the butterflies have confirmed this. I am concerned with salvaging what little personal benefit I can derive from this fiasco. You might wish to begin thinking in the same terms." After a moment Kovac headed back toward the plantation, the white sandy soil crunching beneath his boots. Baker lingered behind, his hands thrust into his pockets, his mind troubled with conflicting emotions. He watched the current, watched as the dark water contorted itself in swells and rough eddies along the crumbling bank, broad and frothing with foam. He felt tired and uneasy and confused. A cracking sound came from behind him. Baker turned. He saw nothing at first, then noticed a disturbance in the branches high above. Something fell through the canopy, snapping twigs and bringing small leaves down with it. It seemed to fall for a very long time, crashing though layer by layer. Finally it broke through a final barrier and collided with the ground twenty yards from where he stood, sending up a puff of dust from the soil. Falling, it had been a blur. But he had glimpsed the arms and legs, the sable hairs. It was a monkey. But monkeys didn't just fall from trees. He ran over to where the animal had landed. Kovac had already reached the spot, was kneeling and looking at the monkey with a frown. "It's dead." Baker didn't need to be told. He'd seen how heavily it had fallen. He studied the body: silver fur, reddish skin, bald head and face. Uakari. The same species that Haniver had found in the closet. Baker nudged it with the tip of his boot, noticed how supple the muscles were, the heat of the flesh. It had died within the last few seconds. Its small fists were tightly clenched. Leaves adhered to its coat. The monkey's lips were bluish. Its eyes were open. And there were no pupils. "Do not touch it," Kovac said quietly. "Find Haniver and Scully and tell them to come here." He looked up at the canopy. It was silent and peaceful. A few birds fluttered through the trees. Details were impossible to discern beyond a dozen yards: anything could have been up there. "It's beginning again," Baker said. "The symptoms are the same." "Maybe. But we will know nothing until we perform a necropsy." Baker could tell that Kovac was nervous. He didn't blame him. His own heart thudded painfully against his ribs as he ran back toward the compound with a thousand possibilities crowding his brain. Behind him, Kovac stayed with the body, circling the area slowly, face turned upward, swatting the flies. Within twenty minutes, four team members had gathered around the dead uakari. Scully tagged the spot, then rolled the monkey onto a plastic sheet and did a quick inspection. Many broken bones from the fall. No visible puncture wounds, although the fur made it hard to tell. "This should be fun," she said. "I haven't dissected a monkey since medical school." "The mouth," said Kovac. Scully slipped on a latex glove, pried open the tiny jaw with its rows of sharp teeth, peered inside. "There's black sputum in his throat, same as the others. Looks like he choked on his own mucus. Let's bring him down to the lab." Haniver nodded. "We've got a spectrometer. I can run its blood for curare. Be careful." They each took an edge of the plastic sheet, bore the uakari stretcher-style back toward the compound. "We'll need to do an analysis of its stomach contents," she said. "I doubt we're looking for anything it ate," said Baker. "Defense compounds are found in leaves. This monkey is a frugivore. Its small intestine isn't long enough to digest anything that might be poisonous." "Maybe it's into nouvelle cuisine. Either way, we aren't assuming anything." The lab. They brought the monkey inside. Scully cleared a table and swept the smooth steel clean of implements and laid the uakari onto the counter like a sacrificial offering. The overhead light illuminated the uakari's face, showing how its simian features still preserved some trace of the horror of the moment, the skin stretched tight around eyes like billiard balls. The monkey's expression was hauntingly human. It did look like a child, ancient wrinkles welling up from within its infantile body. Haniver rummaged through the drawers, came up with scalpels and spatulas and gloves. She looked at Scully. "How do we want to handle this?" "It's the same as dissecting a human being," Scully replied. "Except we've got less to work with." They began. Baker stood off to one side, brooding, his thoughts clouded, tense. After a while he ceased paying attention. Only flashes came through. Scully slicing open the scalp and peeling down the monkey's face like a banana. Sending Haniver out for a hacksaw. The brain. The lungs, samples held beneath the microscope to reveal the characteristic bronchoconstriction and rupturing of tissue. He didn't need to be a doctor to know what that meant: he only needed to look at Scully's pale, worried face. There was no doubt. It was the same thing. Kovac abruptly excused himself and left without explanation. Watching as he left the room, Baker thought he saw something odd in the man's expression, a hardness in his jaw that bothered him. He had a hunch about where Kovac was going, but ignored it. Returned his attention to the necropsy. Scully slit open the entrails, emptied them into a dish. Partially-digested fruit, a handful of seeds still intact. No leaves or vegetable matter. They took a blood sample. Doyle entered the room. "Listen to what -- " He saw the uakari and stopped in mid-sentence. "You're kidding." "I'm afraid not," Haniver replied. "Make yourself useful and hand me those forceps." She was sweating, streaked up to the elbows with gore. The monkey lay unfolded on the table, the coils of its intestines unraveling like thick pasta. Photographs. Scully bottled samples of lungs, brain, aqueous humor, ileum, skin, blood. She was about to turn away when Haniver stopped her. "Hold it." "What?" "It's got something in its hand." The uakari's fists were small and clenched. Baker and Doyle moved closer to the table, leaning forward to see as Haniver gripped the hairy wrist and began to pry the fingers back one by one. It was difficult. The joints were already stiff. It took her more than a minute before she saw what the monkey was holding. When she did, she couldn't believe it. * * * Kovac hiked rapidly beneath the elephantine trees, brandishing his assault rifle with unconscious grace. Thirty-round magazine. In his skillful hands, it had an effective range of half a mile and could put a bullet through a concrete wall with enough velocity to kill on the opposite side. Above him, the sky was the color of a bruise; clouds gathered at the horizon, ominous and swollen with rain. He paused beneath a tall acacia tree. Took his bearings. He was taking a westward course through the hylaea, away from the river. Behind him, the lights of the BFDP compound shone faintly through the barrier of the jungle. The laboratory window was illuminated. They were probably gathered around the uakari, he thought, taking apart its eviscera and putting it back together, hoping to learn more from the steaming cadaver before it was too late. But the monkey had already told Kovac everything he needed to know. Setting the rifle down, he unbuttoned the left breast pocket of his safari jacket. Dug inside. Removed a sheet of notebook paper, unfolded it. Checked a detail. He was close. The rain forest pressed in on all four sides, thousands of species erupting in close-packed tumult. But he needed to ignore the complexity. See beneath the mask. Kovac continued onward. A few insects lit upon his face, his neck, but he paid their bites no heed; his mind was intently focused on the atmosphere, the sky, the ground, trying to sense anything strange, anything out of place. He had worked in the rain forest long enough to sense the difference. It was a simple matter of shutting off one's higher functions, giving over to instinct. It was how the animals knew. Logic played no part in their fear. They simply felt the wrongness, the imbalance of primal forces -- and they responded with terror. A rustling shook the bushes ahead of him. Something struggling through the undergrowth. He raised the rifle, finger tensing on the trigger. Then he relaxed as a scrawny paca freed itself from the brush and meandered unsteadily away, snuffling. It was small, weighing perhaps thirteen pounds. It was alone. That was strange. Usually they traveled in groups. Kovac might have wondered more at this, but was soon distracted by another circumstance: the monkeys in the trees had grown silent. One moment the air was filled with their monotonous wailing; seconds later, as if a switch had been thrown, the jungle went perfectly still. He narrowed his eyes, took a step backward. Then night turned to day. Fire blazed through the heavens, and although Kovac had been expecting it, he fell back. The ribbon of light coursed upward from a locus hundreds of yards away. It seared his pupils, a great conical flame trembling with orange electricity. For the first time he realized the inadequacy of the words "Andes glow." They did not convey the utter strangeness of this light. They did not even come close. Looking at the brightness stretching hundreds of feet into the sky, he knew that he was witnessing a phenomenon of unimaginable age, a luminescence that seemed to burst from the oldest arteries of earth, nursed in the bowels of some untouched auroral fountain. His mouth hung open. And like that, it was gone. Like a reel of film run backward, the ribbon diminished and shrank and was swallowed again by the treetops. Darkness returned, closing over the sky with a vengeance. The monkeys began to scream with renewed vigor. That broke Kovac from his trance. He ran towards the place where the light had vanished, strides powerful and sure. There was no room for fear, only excitement, the adrenaline flooding his body. A faint green afterimage shimmered before his eyes like desire itself. "Almost there," he gasped. "Almost there, you goddamned mother of the -- " Kovac tripped. He stumbled, wrenched his wrist as he tried to break the fall. Straightening up, he sensed immediately that something lay at his feet. Many things. It took a second for his eyes to see what was lying on the soil in front of them. Lumps, perhaps six or seven. Small slick bodies scattered over an area of ten square meters. Pacas. They were all dead. Their mouths were encrusted with spit and bile. Their convulsive struggles had dug shallow trenches in the dirt. They were burning. Kovac blinked, looked again. There was no mistaking it. The pelts of the pacas were covered with many small flames, flickering and spreading in the light breeze, yellow and orange tongues of fire. But there was no heat. No smoke. No light. The atmosphere above the pacas was cool and undisturbed and eerily silent. Kovac stepped back. Looked up. The trees around him were aflame. He stood in the middle of an inferno but he hadn't even broken a sweat. Little dark flames coursed up and down the trunks, covering the branches, running along the bark and the leaves, playing across the boughs -- but they consumed nothing. He reached out with a tentative hand. Felt no heat. The air wasn't even warm. "Fire on the trees," he whispered. Then the flames detached themselves. One, two, a hundred. Growing on the trees like strange orange flowers, they separated themselves from the trunks, fluttered gently in his direction. A dozen smoldering blossoms landed on his left shoulder. "Christ," he said. He shook his arm, trying to smother the cold fire, to brush it off; the flame burst beneath his open palm, fell to the ground, but another took its place within seconds. Still not understanding, he stepped on the leg of a dead paca, heard the bone splinter beneath his weight, almost lost his balance again. The flames were on his vest -- on his legs -- on his hair -- multiplying, moving restlessly, coming in from all directions. He felt them on his face, tickling. Their feelers. Eyes glittering like crystals. Then he knew. Butterflies. They swarmed through the air to fill every cubic yard above the ground, the sound of their wings like pieces of tissue paper being rubbed together. There were thousands of them pressing against his body, covering his face, flapping coldly against his skin. They were yellow and black and orange, bright, fiercely colored -- like fire. He could feel their tiny bodies, their legs, their antennae as they squirmed down the open collar of his shirt, beating their wings like fans and crawling over each other in their insectile frenzy. Quick needles in his skin, small pinpricks of irritation. They were biting him. The itch was maddening. They tried to crawl into his ears. Kovac flailed with his free hand, tried to fight the butterflies away, but wave after wave returned to take the place of those that had come before. Millions. They were fragile. Like nothing. His open hand struck a clump of insects and they exploded like Chinese firecrackers, a crackling of torn membranes, flaming tiger patterns -- Kovac fell over a dead paca. Went down. His finger tightened on the trigger of the gun and sent a volley of bullets shooting outward, the harsh crack-crack-crack punching holes in his eardrums -- and then an enormous bolt of pain tore through his lower leg. His ankle. He'd shot off his goddamned foot. He tried to rise but the agony was unbearable. He could hear blood flowing onto the ground, his blood running like a faucet, but it seemed a distant sensation, unimportant. The butterflies were still everywhere. He had been bitten only five or six times, but his limbs were slowing, stiff, heavy like lead. Kovac tried to scream but the butterflies filled his mouth. He bit down convulsively, felt the thin filaments crunch beneath his teeth, their tiny squirming bodies, hot fluid filling his throat. He gagged. Then spasmed. Once, twice. The assault rifle fell with a dull thud. Kovac lay face-down among the dead pacas, the toes of his boots digging small hyphens in the soil. After a while even that motion stopped. The butterflies left. Part III - The Seventh Circle Haniver lifted the mangled butterfly from the monkey's paw and held it up to the light. Its delicate wings had been crushed and folded, and she could see colored scales flaking off like fine powder -- yellow and orange spots, flaming and criss-crossed with longitudinal streaks of black. The wings were narrow and blade-shaped. Eyes like chips of ruby. Doyle pressed in to get a closer look. "It's not the same kind," he finally said. "The butterflies on the copal trees were different. This isn't the same species." "So what is it?" asked Scully. "I have no idea." Doyle took the tweezers, brought the butterfly beneath a large magnifying loupe. Switched on a light from beneath. Illuminated and viewed at many times its actual size, the head was frighteningly alien, its mandibles jutting like needle-nosed pliers from a beard of coarse black hairs. Frowning, he said, "This isn't right. It has biting mouthparts." Haniver leaned forward. "Is that strange?" "If you're a butterfly, it's pretty fucking amazing. Butterflies evolved a tubular proboscis millions of years ago; all that remains is a tongue for sucking nectar. Everything else degenerated. But this one has all its oral Ginsu knives in place. Either it's a mutant or a species that has remained unchanged since the days of the dinosaurs...." The door burst open. It was Mulder, face flushed with excitement. He spoke quickly, looking back over his shoulder all the while, the words spilling out in an intense rush: "Scully -- everyone -- get out here right now -- it's happening...." "What?" asked Baker, rising in alarm. "The glow. It's fantastic." He spun, ran back outside. Doyle set the butterfly on a metal tray, grabbed a Polaroid camera from the shelf and tossed it to Baker; Scully and Haniver stripped off their gore-bespattered gloves and headed for the door. Outside, the eastern sky was sullen, the moon rising dreamily above the horizon; but when Scully faced the other direction, away from the river, it could have been midday -- a strange and unnatural midday, the light orange and cold on her face. It reminded Scully of some chemical discharge, burning phosphorus or pure sodium. Then she thought of the burning bush. The light was bright but not difficult to look upon. Baker raised the camera, snapped a picture; the gears whirred and spat out the undeveloped photo. He shook it, laid it on the ground before him, took another. "I doubt these will develop properly." "We aren't trying to photograph the light itself," Mulder said, scribbling a hasty diagram. "We just need to know where it comes from, so we can chase it down later." "Why not chase it down now?" asked Scully. As she spoke, the light suddenly dwindled and sank down into nothingness, sucked back into the canopy like a crepe paper streamer. The sunset seemed very dark in comparison. Mulder's face was clouded with disappointment. "That's why," he said. "The glow only lasts for a short time. You don't want to dash into the jungle like -- " Mulder was cut off by a burst of dull, rapid pops from the jungle. The sound was distant and muffled -- it took him a second to recognize the gunshots -- but when he did his eyes widened and he turned around. "Where's Kovac?" Their faces told him everything he needed to know. "Shit," he said, looking back out into the jungle. "He left a few minutes ago," said Scully. "I didn't ask where he was going...." Baker was pale. "I know where he was going." He started in the direction of the gunshots, his mind resounding with horrors that he didn't want to name. Mulder put a hand on his shoulder. "Wait." There was silence for a moment. No one spoke -- they listened to the sounds of the jungle -- and suddenly the same thought crashed into everyone's mind at once. There were no sounds of the jungle. No birds were singing; there were no monkeys in the treetops. The rain forest had gone as quiet as a graveyard. Doyle glanced uncertainly from side to side. Haniver was on his left, her shirt still splattered with monkey blood; Scully was on his right, looking intently into the darkness. He followed her gaze. The edge of the forest lay perhaps a hundred yards away. The space between the trees was as black as construction paper but he peered into it anyway, searching for something -- he didn't know for what; for a little while the irregular border of the jungle looked like some elaborate optical illusion, the pattern of shadows making him see movement where there wasn't any, as if something were prowling just beyond the limits of his vision.... Then he realized that something was. "Get inside." Doyle began to inch slowly backwards. His voice was low, almost conversational. "We need to get indoors right now." "Goddammit," Baker said fiercely, "I am not leaving Kovac out there alone. Not this time -- " "Don't you get it?" shouted Doyle. "Don't you fucking understand?" He took Scully and Haniver by the arms, began to drag them back towards the building with a madman's strength -- they protested, struggling -- but Doyle was acting like a man possessed. "It's headed for us," he said, gasping for breath. "Listen, I saw them in the trees, I saw them in the jungle -- the light is a signal, a sign. Look, goddammit, look at the fucking trees!" Baker looked. The trees were on fire and the flames were spreading this way. Except they weren't flames; they were -- "Oh my God," he said. The camera slipped from his fingers, fell to the ground and broke. He went backwards in a stumbling run. Doyle had already herded Haniver and Scully into the laboratory and now he stood in the doorway with his eyes riveted to the inferno of red that had broken through the tree-lined barrier and was hurtling itself towards them on a million razor wings. A din filled the air like all the earth's oceans crashing together at once. It rose into an alien roar, shaking Baker to his very soul as he ran; Mulder followed him indoors, his face distorted with excitement and terror. Doyle came inside and slammed the door shut but the sound continued. The glassware on the shelves rattled. Haniver instinctively covered her ears with her hands. Scully tried to say something but couldn't. The words wouldn't come. Then darkness descended. Up until then the room had been faintly lit by the setting sun, its dusky light entering from outside, but now the windows went black. Scully couldn't see, but she heard the noises. The sounds of tiny bodies pressing themselves against glass. She staggered on numb legs to the window. It was covered with a dark writhing mass of insects. They were flying and smashing themselves into the glass. She heard them moving across the roof, rubbing their antennae against outside walls. They had spread out across the entire building. Without thinking, she and Mulder linked hands. Baker stood in the middle of the room, listening to the fluttering of wings. His heart was pounding but he could think only of Kovac alone in the jungle. Sudden anger filled him and he struck a wooden stool with one hand, sent it flying across the room. "Jesus," he said. Next to him, Doyle paced back and forth, his fists clenched, his breath coming in short ragged gasps, his eyes fixed on the squirming carpet of insects outside. Through her shock Haniver could smell the poison. She dimly understood that if one of the panes cracked a hundred thousand creatures would pour into the room before she could scream. The sound of flapping wings filled the world. Scully knew that it would drive her insane before long -- her mind would snap beneath it like a twig. She felt herself going unhinged; for one moment she envisioned taking the stool that Baker had thrown and smashing all the windows, then turning her gun on herself.... It did not stop immediately. Instead it grew gradually softer as the butterflies detached themselves one by one from the side of the building, windows still grimy with their splattered bodies. They were leaving. Finally the gray light of evening began to enter the room again through chinks and cracks in that living shroud: and like that, the butterflies had vanished. All of them. Silence returned like a wave of thunder. Haniver stood with her hands over her ears, shaking. She remembered the monkey and the snake and told herself that she was all right and that she was not going to lose control. She hated her fear and the silence; she hated the flat evening light; she hated all these things with a violence that made her weak. "They're gone," Mulder said. He had fallen to his knees, still holding Scully's hand. He was trembling. "Oh Christ, I hope they're gone." Haniver began to cry. * * * It was a long night. The generator had died, but Baker found a kerosene lamp in one of the lower cupboards. Before lighting it, he went to all the windows, pulled down the shades and taped them securely shut. There was no question of any of them going outside, so the five remaining team members huddled around the glow of the lamp, looking across at one another, hoping to see some shred of reassurance. But there was none. Mulder and Scully's hands were still tightly clasped -- it seemed right somehow -- and Haniver sat next to Doyle, her eyes puffy and red. Only Baker kept his distance from the others, his thoughts returning obsessively to the same problem, the same man. He weighed his words for a long time before he spoke up. "We aren't leaving without Kovac," he said. Doyle looked at him as if he were crazy. "We sure as fucking hell aren't going to stay here. I'm not too eager to abandon this project, either, but even I have my limits. I say we get the hell back to Paramaribo. Forget Kovac. There's no way he could have survived what we just saw." "This isn't some kind of fucking game," Baker replied angrily. "I'm not about to abandon Kovac until I know for goddamn sure that he's dead. Show me his body and I'll agree with you. But until then, we don't know anything." He turned to Mulder. "Tell me the truth. If Scully was the one who was missing, you'd go after her, wouldn't you?" Mulder stared into the bright flame of the lamp. "Of course I'd go after her. I'd go after her in a split second." He felt Scully squeeze his hand; squeezed back. "But I'd count on you all to hold me back and keep me from killing myself," he added. "Let's be rational about this," Haniver said slowly. "It's going to be difficult to get out of here in any case. Between us and our rafts there's a half-mile walk through the jungle which I'm not too eager to undertake. Even in our biohazard suits it's going to be one hell of a mess. That's the first point." She paused. "The second point is that we can't remain here, either. Remember what happened the last time someone tried to hide indoors?" Doyle remembered. "Oh shit, that's right -- the building was demolished." He swore to himself, then turned to Mulder. "You think the butterflies did that?" "I don't know. If the rains hadn't washed away most of the evidence, I might have a better idea. But no, I don't know what destroyed the communications booth." He fell briefly silent. "I hate to say this, but Haniver is right. The only option we have is to send a distress call and get somebody to airlift us the hell out of here. Then we can worry about Kovac." Baker hesitated. "There's something you need to know." He told them about the current situation in the city: the military coup, the total ban on air traffic. As he spoke, he could see the dejection and disbelief invading their faces. "It could be several days before the army permits any aircraft to enter the forest," he concluded. "I hate to say this, but it looks like we've been left on our own." "Then there's only one course of action available to us," said Haniver. "We take the river back to the Tirio village. I think we can do it. But not without a better idea of what we're up against." Scully looked around. "Is there any doubt now about what killed those men?" The reply was silence. "So these are poisonous insects," Mulder said. "Poisonous butterflies. Doyle, what's the scientific precedent on that?" "Good fucking question." Doyle retrieved the specimen that had been found clutched in the uakari's paw -- the monkey was still sitting on the counter -- and returned gripping it in a pair of tweezers. In the flickering light, the insect seemed ready to fly away at any moment. "Butterflies aren't poisonous in a conventional sense," he began. "Most can't even bite you -- although they can jab their proboscis into your arm if provoked. If that happens, there's a chance that you'll suffer a reaction and go into anaphylactic shock, which could kill you if you're particularly sensitive. "But that isn't what we're dealing with here," he continued. "First of all, this butterfly has biting mouthparts. That's pretty fucking rare. Maybe in Malaysia, you'll find a couple of really ancient species with this kind of dental work. They aren't poisonous, though. Whereas this little guy has some potent shit running through his veins, and an impressive injection system. In short, he's a killing machine. He's a flying syringe." "And there are millions of them out there in the jungle," Scully said. "That's what I don't understand. How could a species like this go undiscovered for so long?" Baker gingerly took the butterfly from Doyle, examined its orange and yellow pigments, the flames coursing across its translucent wings. "This butterfly could be flying above us all the time," he said, "and we would never know it." "What do you mean?" "It's part of the tiger complex." Baker tried to explain. "Taxonomists recognize certain broad patterns of color -- called complexes -- as characteristic of many different species of butterfly. In the jungle, different complexes fly at different heights because their colors match the light penetration at those levels. When they fly at the proper altitude, they're invisible." He held up the butterfly. "The tiger complex occupies a layer of forest two to seven meters above the ground, a level in which yellow and orange and black predominate. That's why the swarm appeared so quickly. One moment, there was nothing; the next, and it looked like the trees were on fire. But the insects were there the entire time. We just couldn't see them until they descended to our level." "So we won't notice them until they've already begun to attack," said Scully. "That's right." No one said much of anything after that. Eventually they came to some kind of consensus. Scully pointed out that since the butterflies were prone to attack after dusk, if the team only ventured abroad during the day, sunlight might afford them enough protection to find the river. Doyle agreed, suggested that they also wait for the next heavy rainfall. "Poisonous or not," he said, "these butterflies have the same habits as any other winged insect. They won't fly in swarms when there's a hard rain falling." It was agreed. They would spend the night in the labs, and make a run for the river, wearing their biohazard suits, at the first sign of rain the next morning. This meant another ten hours of waiting. For some reason, this struck them as the worst part. They prepared to pass the night. Baker found a stack of foam mattresses on one of the shelves, rolled up like jellied pastries, and spread them across the floor to inflate by themselves. The monkey was still lying on the counter. Doyle took the cadaver and was sliding it into the freezer when he noticed a six-pack of beer sitting on a lower shelf, right there alongside leaf cuttings and soil samples. He cracked one for himself, then offered one to Mulder. The FBI agent took it. The two of them sat drinking morosely, sitting on tall lab stools, listening to the sounds of the forest outside. "I can't enjoy this shit anymore," Doyle said introspectively, staring at the can in his hands. "After that night in the movie theater, whenever I got drunk I always saw Joan of Arc swimming in front of me, like a fucking guardian angel." "Are you seeing her now?" "I guess so." He sipped thoughtfully. "I wonder about that sometimes. I pray to her when I get really wasted, and I'm a fucking Jew, you know? But I'm not even praying to the real Joan of Arc. I'm praying to the actress, the one in that silent film. What was her name again?" Doyle scrunched up his face, trying to remember. "I don't know. Remind me to look it up if we ever get out of this alive." Doyle took a final swig. "It's funny. This actress has been dead for at least fifty years. But somehow I've always thought that if there's a heaven -- I mean, if there's a place where all the good spirits hang out -- then she's probably up there with the real Joan, and they're best friends. Like no one could understand Joan of Arc better than some Italian chick who played her in a movie once." He crumpled the can and threw it away. "Fuck it, I don't know what I'm saying anymore." He looked at Mulder, his eyes watery and bloodshot. "You a religious man?" "Maybe. I'd like to be." "I don't buy that for a second," said Doyle. "I don't think you follow any cross except the one you nail yourself to every morning." He coughed. "You pray to anything, Mulder?" "Me?" Mulder hung his head. "Hell, at times like this I pray to Scully. At least she's someone I can count on." He raised his beer. "Here's a toast to idolatry," he said, and drained the last few drops. * * * They went to bed. Baker blew out the lantern and they were in darkness, each alone with his or her own thoughts. For Haniver sleep felt like it should have been the most unthinkable thing in the world; but when she lay down and shut her eyes, she realized that she was exhausted. The mattress was surprisingly soft. Haniver listened to the sound of breathing for a while, and suddenly felt bitter tears in the back of her throat. Kovac was on his way to Washington. She knew it. Perhaps this had been his deal with Aquino. Perhaps he was headed downstream at this very moment, waiting for a lone airplane to retrieve him and samples of the butterflies from the Tirio village. Either that, or Kovac was dead. Haniver felt herself desperately hoping for the latter possibility. With that sullen thought, she drifted into sleep. That night, Haniver had a dream. She dreamt that she stood in a forest where nothing grew: no trace of green, no leaf or flower. The trees around her were skeletal and dead. There were brambles at her feet. The air filled with cries of suffering and despair; she turned around and around but couldn't see where the voices came from. Then someone suggested that she break a branch from the tree before her, a huge, contorted plant of immense age with strange man-faced birds perching in its boughs. Haniver reached out her hand and snapped off a twig -- * * * Baker did not sleep. He stared up at the ceiling, his eyes like spheres of dry ice. The rest of the team had already dropped one by one into slumber. He could recognize the sounds that each made in the dark. Mulder lay snoring on the smooth formica counter; Doyle made soft and strangely endearing coughing noises as he drew his blanket more closely around him. But Baker did not sleep. There were some images you could never wash from your mind, no matter how carefully you bleached and scrubbed. For Baker, it was the memory of that river. Of guiding the rafts down those black waters, ferrying the flesh of the men with whom he had lived and worked. You never really got to know a man until you had zipped him into a body bag and carried him through the jungle, Baker thought. Something about that dead weight stirred your compassion more deeply than words ever could. Baker remembered the taste of the jaguar's blood in his mouth. By taking that fierce communion, he realized now, he had entered into a contract. Not with Quassapelagh, but with himself. The thought of the two dead cubs in the cat's belly haunted him like a promise that had to be kept. In eating the flesh of the mother, he had taken the cubs as his own. They were dead in the womb, but he had pledged himself to resurrect them. That was the meaning of the oath. Do not accept death, Baker told himself. This is not why you were chosen to survive. Which meant that he needed to find Kovac. Baker rolled over onto his side, propped his head up on one elbow. Looked at the others. They were all asleep, curled in anonymous lumps on the floor. He could leave quietly and none of them would notice. He could go into the rain forest and find Kovac and bring him back. It would be easy. In the back of his mind a rational voice told him that the DOE administrator was dead; but reason didn't have much to do with this. Baker had known that rational voice all his life. To ignore it was to practice the art of being human. Baker found himself standing. He didn't know how it had happened, but now he was standing and stepping carefully over the sleeping forms at his feet, careful not to make a sound, not thinking any longer but letting himself be carried by something beyond what he understood about himself. The door leading to the outside was all the way across the room. At one point Haniver stirred and muttered something in her sleep -- something in a language other than English -- and Baker froze. Held his breath. It felt as if his heart was pounding loud enough to wake them all. He stood there, a bead of cold sweat trickling down the small of his back. But eventually he moved onward. Of course. At the door Baker paused, but only for a second. Then he went outside. The night air was too hot, like the inside of an oven. He walked quickly down the path, his shoes crunching against the gravel. He wondered if some of the butterflies could have remained on the roofs, perhaps, or nestled in the eaves of the buildings....It took him less than a minute to cover the ground between the lab and his destination, but it seemed like much longer. Finally he arrived at the barracks, reached out and twisted the knob with numb fingers. Pulled. The door wouldn't open. Baker swore. The goddamned door wouldn't open. He twisted the knob this way and that, listening all the while for the flutter of wings behind him, the hairs on the back of his neck rising, waiting for the tickle of segmented legs.... Finally he tugged on the door with his entire body, hard, and it came open with a groan. It had been stuck against the jamb, probably expanding with nocturnal moisture and warmth. Christ. He went inside and slammed the door in the jungle's face. He caught his breath and crept down the dark hallway, counting the doors by feel. The third led into the bedroom he had shared with Kovac. He opened it. Inside was a clutter of papers and charts; the two men had spent the afternoon going over topographical maps of the plantation. Kovac's pocket watch still sat on the desk. For some reason this comforted Baker, as if the watch was sure that its owner would return soon. He took it, clenching the cold circle of metal in his large fist, and went over to the biohazard suits. They were hanging in the closet. They were too bulky and heavy for ordinary hangers, so they came with a special rig of their own, a collapsible metal grille with hooks for the gloves and hoods and respirators. Baker took down the pieces, began to pull them over his muscular body. It was hard work, as usual; it took maybe ten minutes before he was completely suited and ready to leave. Baker was about to go outside when he remembered the field kit. The rucksack sat in one corner of the room, compact and waterproofed at the seams. He brought this pack whenever he went into the jungle; it was filled with small articles he liked to have for himself -- elastic bandages for puttees, mylar blankets, a hatchet, airplane glue for botfly bites, that sort of thing -- but it also had a pair of night-vision goggles, a heavy-duty model he'd bought from army surplus. He hung them around his neck like binoculars. Then he picked up the field kit and left the room. Outside, he felt a lot better. The suit was hot, but it offered enough security for him to look around with some degree of composure. He raised the goggles to his eyes and switched them on. They were hard to use through the stiff plastic of his face mask, and it took a second for him to adjust to the green smokiness of the world; but soon he could clearly see the outlines of trees, the epiphytes swaying gently in the warm wind. The jungle was too damned quiet. All he could hear was the hiss of the respirator, and the blood throbbing in his ears. Before he headed into the forest, there were a few things he wanted to check. He walked clumsily back to the lab on rubber-soled feet. Examined the walls and the windows. There were still a few dead butterflies stuck to the glass. He wondered why he had found no insects four days ago. Then he remembered the rain. The bodies would have been washed away and obliterated beneath the drops, leaving no trace of their coming. They were delicate things. On the ground was the Polaroid camera he'd dropped and broken during the butterfly attack, along with two photos sitting next to each other on the sandy dirt. He knelt, picked up the pictures, brushed away the grime. Both depicted the same area of the forest, the Andes glow emerging from behind the trees. The glow itself had not shown up well; the reddish-orange streak resembled a longitudinal smear or blotch where the photograph had failed to develop. But there was a tall ceiba tree emerging from the canopy at about the right place. He would aim for that. Baker set off into the jungle. Walking was easier beneath the trees. Through his goggles the jungle looked ghostly and dead, like a petrified forest at the bottom of the ocean. He moved carefully, keeping his bearings with the trees he passed. When you were deep in the jungle, you wouldn't find two of the same kind of tree too close to one another, so you could mark your progress by their names -- mimosa, cecropia, frangipani, cacao, acacia, strangler fig.... He passed what he thought was a large moss-covered stone. Then he realized that it was a paca, dead, covered with a writhing blanket of insects. They had been going at the animal pretty good; the hide was loose, like an ill-fitting fur coat, and the eyes were gone. He toed it with the tip of his boot, rolled it over, looked for orange and yellow wings. He didn't see any, but that didn't mean much. Even if the paca had been killed by the butterflies, their bodies would have been devoured by other bugs. Baker straightened up and was about to resume walking when he thought of something. Unzipping his field kit, he fished around until he found a can of luminescent orange spray-paint. He shook it up, listening to it rattle, and then painted a small cross midway up the trunk of the nearest tree, about eight feet from the cadaver. Marking the spot. At the rate the bugs were going, the paca would be gone by morning. He tucked the can back into his bag and went onward. He could see the trunk of the ceiba tree in the distance, smooth and gray, with big buttressed roots. Another hundred yards and he found himself standing in a small clearing. Kovac was there. Baker fell to his knees. For one hideous moment he thought he was going to get sick and vomit right there inside the biohazard suit, the puke splattering against his face shield; he closed his eyes tightly and tried to stop the dizzying sickness that was spiraling through his skull. It felt like he'd been punched in the gut. "Fuck," he finally gasped, his lips moist. "Fuck." He sat there for a long time, beneath the ceiba tree. Looking. He couldn't bring himself to go closer or turn away. He just sat there. Kovac lay face-down in a heap of dead pacas. His assault rifle had fallen in the dust by his feet. The bugs had been at him, too. After the sickness passed, Baker felt dull and empty inside, like he didn't give a damn about anything any longer. It was hot inside the suit. He considered ripping out the seams and pulling the hood right the fuck off his head -- the danger didn't seem to matter anymore -- but then he thought about what he might smell. If nothing else, the respirator protected him from the stink. Only the stench of his own fear and sweat filled the hood. He inhaled it like a drug. A voice from his right. "Baker." He turned. It was Mulder, wearing a biohazard suit, a hooded flashlight in his hand. "I woke up and you were missing," Mulder said, "so I assumed that -- " Mulder noticed Kovac and fell silent. He raised his flashlight, shone the thin finger of brightness across the body. The insects scattered wherever the light touched the corpse. His arm fell heavily to his side. Switching the light off, he came over to Baker, sat next to him. They brooded side by side beneath the tree, not speaking, insulated from one another by thick layers of latex and the lukewarm hint of death in the air. "It's a bitch to be the survivor," said Baker at last. "Yeah." Baker studied his thick gloves for a long time before speaking again. He tried not to look at the body. Dull buzzing in his ears and he remembered shooing away the flies as he floated the twelve dead men downstream. The insects always found you first. In Africa they believed that the first maggot to emerge from a dead man's flesh was his soul, struggling to escape. But here the bugs only ate. "There's something you need to know," he said. Fighting to keep his voice steady, he told Mulder about his final conversation with Kovac. "I think that when Kovac realized the project was in trouble," he concluded, "he wanted to secure some measure of compensation for himself. The copal trees were a dead end -- the butterflies were proof enough of that -- but he didn't want the past two years to have been a total loss. So he made a deal." "With Ferdinand Aquino?" "But it wasn't just Aquino. There's someone else involved. He wouldn't tell me much about it, but this deal must have been something special. I worked with Kovac on this project for years. I know he wouldn't throw it away unless he was sure of some enormous payoff. Even before we returned to the rain forest, he'd already made up his mind." "So he exposed the entire project to Aquino -- " " -- in exchange for passage into the jungle and a few days of lead time," Baker finished. "He figured that the copal trees were a dead end, so he didn't feel too guilty about handing it over to the Surinamese opposition. He just needed to get here before anyone else did." "But why?" asked Mulder. "If he was selling out the project anyway, what was so important here?" "He was looking for something." "For what?" "It had something to do with the Andes glow. That's why he ran out here. He followed the glow to its source and was attacked by the butterflies. He brought that goddamned assault rifle with him -- I guess he was expecting something." Mulder looked at Kovac's body, the rifle lying uselessly by its side. "What do you think it was?" Baker turned to Mulder. There was resolve in his voice. "I think we should check his pockets," he said. "That's easier said than done." But Mulder went over to the body anyway. Face-down in the dust, Kovac looked like a shattered scarecrow. He crouched, brushed the bugs away from Kovac's shirt. Baker knelt beside him, looked at the corpse through his night-vision lenses. Turned out its pockets. Nothing inside but a few large beetles, their antennae bobbing stupidly in the night air. Baker removed his goggles. "We'll have to roll him over." "You better be pretty damned sure about this," said Mulder. "I am." Baker took Kovac by the shoulders and pulled. The body flipped over atop the dead pacas. He tried not to look at Kovac's ruined face as he dug through the pockets on the front of the vest, undoing the buttons with his clumsy fingers. In the left breast pocket Baker found what he was looking for. It was a sheet of lined paper, torn from a spiral notebook. "You know what this is?" he asked. Mulder took the sheet, unfolded it. "A page from DeFillips's project journal." "Kovac had it all the time. He told me about it but didn't tell me what it said." "Let's find out." Mulder shone the flashlight on the page. It was wrinkled and worn but still legible. Its date was May 21, the day before the author had died. Mulder read it aloud, stumbling over the occasional illegible scrawl: "'Three hours since James and I went to track down the light. Didn't find it but found something else in the clearing five hundred meters from camp. I still can't bring myself to report. It was alive. The Tirio call it the Mai d'agoa. But I don't think -- '" He stopped. Baker nudged him. "Keep going." "That's all there is." Mulder turned the page over, saw that it was blank. "The Mai d'agoa," he said thoughtfully. "I know that word. Quassapelagh said it to me, but he didn't elaborate...." He looked up. "Do you know what it means?" "Yes," said Baker. He took the page from Mulder's hands, examined it with a frown. "The Mai d'agoa is an Indian legend, like he says here. If you travel up and down the Amazon you'll hear it from every tribe along the way. So far as I know, it's been seen in every part of the jungle, but always without scientific confirmation." "What is it?" "It's supposed to be a serpent, a water snake hundreds of feet long," said Baker. "The mother of the river, or spirit of the river. That's what the name means. It's probably an exaggerated traditional description of the anaconda, but some cryptozoologists keep searching for a long-extinct dinosaur species, like the one that's supposed to live in the Congo...." "The Mokele-Mbembe." Mulder began to get excited. "Yes, I know about that." "Well, that's the story. You sit around the campfire in these villages and you hear it. It's nothing new. DeFillips probably heard it when he first came to this part of the jungle." "Do you think the BFDP team could have found something like this?" "I don't know. I've been working in the rain forest for years, and I never saw anything close to what this thing is supposed to be. I can't see how anything that gigantic could elude us for so long. These goddamned butterflies are strange enough by themselves." Mulder looked down at Kovac's body. "That is a problem. I don't know what the butterflies could have to do with the Mai d'agoa. It's too much to swallow at once." "Yeah." Baker took a silver space blanket from the field kit, shook it open and spread it gently across Kovac's body. It was too short to cover his feet. Christ. No matter how often you did something like this, you never got used to it. If you ignored the feet, anything could have been beneath the blanket -- a stone, a pile of equipment, or even just a swelling of the ground. There was something else he needed to say. But he chose his words carefully. He didn't know how Mulder would react. "We should speak with Haniver." "What?" "I think that Haniver is somehow a part of this," said Baker. "I think that she and Kovac were working for the same men." Mulder took his time before responding. There was no visible emotion on his face, but Baker could sense the agitation beneath the surface. "Baker, you'd better have a damned good reason for saying that," he finally said. "She's been sending video transmissions to someone." Mulder exhaled sharply. "I didn't know that." "It's true. She goes into the bathroom and closes the door behind her, but then she puts the antenna in the window. I've seen it. I think she's beaming reports to Washington." "And she's looking for the same thing as Kovac?" "Haniver has her own agenda." Baker took the can of paint from his field kit, sprayed an orange cross on the trunk of the ceiba tree. One diagonal slash, and then another. The four-footed ideogram glowed softly in the darkness, a grim memorial of the place where Kovac had been slain. "They were competing," he said. "They were going after the same prize, and whoever found it first was the winner." Mulder smashed his fist against the trunk of the tree in sudden fury. "Shit." "What is it?" "Do you know what this is?" Mulder asked. "This is fucking black ops. It's the Pentagon. This is the way they always work. There's never only one insider: they always buy two, and play them off each other. That's how you get results. It's survival of the fittest, and Kovac just got selected out of the gene pool...." There were two flushed spots on his cheekbones, places where the anger had erupted. "And Haniver?" asked Baker. "Haniver's still going for the gold." Mulder fixed his eyes on the trunk of the ceiba tree, on the marker. The marker was in the shape of a St. Andrew's cross. It was an X. "Maybe I'm crazy, but I think she's searching for the Mai d'agoa." "That's what Kovac thought, apparently." Baker put the can of paint back into the kit, slung the pack over his shoulder. "When we found the dead monkey, Kovac knew that Haniver would be busy with the dissection for an hour or two, which gave him a chance to get to the clearing, to look around without interruption. That's why he rushed into the jungle while everybody else -- " He broke off. Mulder's face had gone white. Baker was about to ask what was wrong when he heard it. The noise had been there the entire time, he realized, an undercurrent thrumming like electricity beneath their words, troubling the air above. The air in the tiger complex. He sighed heavily. Had something already descended? He didn't want to know. Perhaps if he turned around he would see nothing. Perhaps. Baker turned around. The trees were on fire. * * * The two men flung themselves to the ground as butterflies exploded around them in a screaming whirlwind. The air was pushed aside in a burst of paper-thin wings as the insects filled every inch of space above their heads -- it was like striking a match in a room full of propane gas. Mulder had his head in the dust. His eyes squeezed shut. The thundering switchblade howl filled his ears and he felt the pressure on his shoulders and legs and back as the bugs landed on him in droves and looked for a place to bite. He was completely covered. The butterflies were everywhere. He was drowning in a sea of flame. Baker had fallen beside him. He groped blindly, found the other man's hand. Grabbed it. Baker grabbed back. They clung to each other as the swarm climbed across them, their mandibles working uselessly against rubber, crawling over them in wave after wave after wave. "Oh God," Mulder said. He couldn't even hear his own voice. The fluttering was too much. Irrationally he tried to rise, to run, but the mass of insects on his body was too heavy -- he couldn't move his arms or legs, only vaguely felt Baker's hand in his. He didn't know how much longer his biosuit could hold. He felt like he was suffocating, like it hurt to breathe, and he thought for one horrifying second that he had been bitten and was feeling the first effects of the poison. Then he realized that his lungs and ribcage were being squeezed, sandwiched between the sandy earth and the monumental bulk of butterflies pressing down above them. He gasped. Gulped for air. The compression and the claustrophobia were too much. Mulder wanted to scream. He was going to scream. Then he was on his hands and knees. He'd managed to rise into a crawling position. He could move. He didn't know whether the butterflies had begun to depart or whether the adrenaline was flooding his veins and giving him enough strength to drag himself forward but in the end it didn't matter. Baker had risen too, was straining with every tendon and nerve in his body to get to his knees. Now they were face to face. The men supported one another, propped each other up as they struggled into a standing position, the insects colliding with their hoods. They were up. They were on their feet. They flung their arms around each other and ran, not caring which way they went. They crushed butterflies underfoot. Pushed their way through a solid wall of orange and yellow wings. Mulder extended an arm and swept aside cloud after cloud of bugs but more came in their place. His mind had gone away. In its place was something driven by raw animal terror -- he had to move -- to keep moving, to fucking fight and claw and tear his way to safety -- They collided heavily with the ceiba tree, almost went down. Mulder knocked his head against the trunk. Felt an egg-sized lump form almost immediately. The pain was dizzying and intense, but Baker caught him and kept him from falling: they both understood that to fall again was to die, to lie there on the ground forever and not rise again until the butterflies had chewed their way through the suits. There was no question about it. They had to keep moving. The insane yammer of wings filled Mulder's ears and made him think that this was truly Hell, a nightmare where his legs were mired in mud and the air slammed and battered his body as he ran, one exhausted step after another. Another. And another. It was too much, oh Christ, it was too fucking much.... And then they were out. The air cleared. The night was still darker than death but the bugs were gone, somehow they were gone; the men could walk and breathe again -- they had emerged from the cloud. Their suits were still covered with living insects but they were fewer and the layers were thinner; Mulder and Baker shook the insects loose, brushed them away, left them bruised and disoriented on the ground and squashed them beneath their boots. Soon the dirt was covered with dead or dying butterflies and the men were coated with gore, black blood, bits of wings and body segments. They took the clean dust at their feet and scrubbed the suits, did their damnedest to remove all traces of the attack. They did so without speaking, by mutual consent. They were shaking hard enough to make their teeth rattle like dice in their heads. "That was too fucking close," Mulder said. "Yeah." Baker stopped and turned away. "Jesus, I think I'm going to be sick." "I'd hold it in if I were you." Baker closed his eyes, tried to fight the sour taste at the back of his throat. "I'm not used to this," he said. "I've been up against all kinds of shit in this forest but never anything like that. No. They were trying to fucking annihilate us." "They're going to keep trying," Mulder said. "Let's get the hell out of Dodge." They moved on. Eventually Baker realized that they were lost. They had been stumbling through the jungle for hundreds of yards -- he had no idea in which direction -- and everything looked strange. He couldn't even see the moon; it was hidden behind the trees. And they had left the flashlight and goggles back in the clearing. "It just keeps getting better and better," he said. Mulder understood their predicament. "Now what?" Baker sank down. "We spend the night here." "You're kidding." "We don't have much of a choice. We could wander forever in the dark and stray farther and farther away from the plantation. In the daylight we'll have a better chance of finding our way back." Mulder tried to catch his breath. "Do you think we're safe here?" "I'm guessing that the butterflies are territorial. If we don't bother them, they won't bother us." "And what if you're wrong?" "Then we're fucked." Baker looked around. This was as good a place to make camp as any: the ground was level and the soil was reasonably soft. He lay on his side, working his hip back and forth to make a shallow depression in the dirt. Closed his eyes. Mulder followed his example, putting his ear to the soil -- and then suddenly sat up. He had heard the rumor of distant rumblings. Or so he thought. There had been something nervous about the ground. Mulder lay down again, listening to the earth. No doubt about it. There was a strange life to the soil. As if it echoed with the footfalls of unseen beasts, herds moving from one place to another in the night, trampling the dust beneath their hooves. It was not a sound so much as a sensation, a faint aura of uneasiness radiating up from the dirt. "It's always like this," Baker said abruptly. "The ground, I mean. You feel it?" "Yeah, I feel it," said Mulder. "People come to the forest, see the natives sleeping in hammocks and assume that it's because of the heat. But that isn't why. Not by a long shot. It's because the ground is so damned alive. It's the worst soil in the world, but it's alive anyway. It's haunted. I've never known anyone who could manage a restful sleep on it. It gives you bad dreams." "I've learned to enjoy my bad dreams." Mulder turned over onto his back, the sandy dust gritting beneath him. Looked up at the canopy. The trees towered above him, skyscraper trees woven together with lianas and vines and figs. He could see stars in a few places, shining down through cracks in that living roof. He wondered what he would do if those stars were suddenly blotted out by a swarm of creatures so alien that they hardly seemed part of this universe. He knew what alien meant, had known his share of xenophobia in the face of the unknown, had even faced an insect attack or two before -- but then there were these bugs. These butterflies in the tiger complex. Baker was right. They threw themselves at you and kept coming until you were dead. They would splatter and destroy and crush themselves in the process and it didn't seem to matter. Baker had been nursing similar thoughts. "It still doesn't make any sense," he said. "We're looking at an incredibly aggressive insect species, one that attacks and kills everything in sight at no apparent benefit to itself. It's crazy. There's always a balance to these things. If one organism in the environment doesn't practice moderation, the entire system collapses. It's a basic law of evolution." "Mankind doesn't seem to have any trouble breaking that law," said Mulder. "We're overdue to pay the penalty. I can accept that; we've only been around for forty thousand years. But these butterflies are a different story. You heard what Doyle said. If their physiology is any clue, these insects are as old as the dinosaurs." Baker exhaled. "I can't understand how they could exist in the rain forest for so long without affecting the ecosystem in visible ways." Mulder pondered this. He had an idea -- one of his goddamned insane ideas -- and wondered whether he could share it with Baker. If it had been Haniver or Scully he wouldn't have said anything; he'd known these women for years, yet neither seemed to understand how quickly his notions came, or how long he waited before venturing to speak his mind -- even though his speculations seemed absurdly premature when they finally came. As if there were a sibyl inside his head, inscribing her prophecies on leaves and scattering them to the four winds -- except for the ones he managed to save. Sometimes these ideas were so strange he didn't know whether to burn them or redeem them for the infinite. This was one of those moments. "Maybe the butterflies weren't in the ecosystem until we came here," Mulder said at last. "Excuse me?" said Baker. "Bear with me for a second. Let's assume that a connection exists between the Andes glow and the insect attacks -- that the light serves as some kind of signal that a swarm is coming." "That seems fairly obvious." "But the timing is irregular. We know from the project journal that at least three hours elapsed between the first appearance of the glow and the butterfly attack, because team members had enough time to investigate and record the sighting. But when we saw the glow, the butterflies attacked within minutes. Do you know what that suggests to me?" "I can't wait to find out." Mulder began to speak rapidly, trying to force his ideas into the air before they disappeared beneath the turbulent haze of his imagination. "I think the glow is the visible sign of some sort of forging process. Maybe some kind of defense mechanism. Whenever human activity enters the rain forest, it disturbs the environment, upsets the balance of nature in some way. If the intrusion is large enough -- something on the level of the BFDP plantation, for example -- maybe it triggers a immune response, a swarm of killer insects generated to destroy any invaders, like antibodies annihilating a specific strain of bacillus." Baker sat up. "That's crazy." "Let me finish. The butterflies don't disturb the ecosystem because they come into existence only when necessary. This explains why the interval between the Andes glow and the arrival of the insects has been getting shorter. The jungle's immune mechanism could remain dormant for years, even decades, before being awakened again; at first it would take days or hours to create a new swarm, but once the cycle began in earnest the butterflies could be released ever more swiftly into the forest. The Andes glow is the electrical byproduct of this process, some kind of bioplasmic discharge caused by the spontaneous birth of millions of insects...." Mulder trailed off, sensing some skepticism. "What do you think?" Baker took up a handful of gray soil, let the dust trickle thoughtfully through his fingers. Remembered T.S. Eliot. "If I were a younger man, I'd say that you were demented," he said. "Maybe you are. But living in the rain forest for the past few years has taught me -- well, shit, it's taught me that the reality of the jungle is so strange that I can't dismiss anything out of hand. The ant-trees, for example. You remember, the ants that ambushed Scully near the river...." "Of course I remember." "That's an immune system of sorts. The ants protect the tree, killing parasitic plants, caterpillars; if you touch the trunk or snap off a twig, they rain down on you by the thousands. I could imagine a similar relationship between the butterflies and another plant species. It would explain why the swarm didn't pursue us beyond a certain point. Once we were out of its territory, we no longer represented a threat." "And perhaps the symbiotic relationship could progress to such an extent -- " " -- that the tree could spontaneously generate and give birth to the insects? I don't know about that." Baker paused. "There's something else, though." "What?" "There has to be a plant involved at some point. Butterflies wouldn't be able to generate this kind of poison on their own; their metabolism isn't complex enough. This means that they're absorbing it from some sort of plant, possibly when feeding on leaves during the larval stage." He looked up at the canopy. "I guarantee it. Somewhere in this jungle there's a tree or shrub or vine that hasn't been discovered yet. But it contains the deadliest poison that mankind has ever seen." * * * Eventually the two men managed to sleep. It was a hot and feverish slumber; every ten or twenty minutes Baker would raise his head, open his eyes and for a few disorienting moments be unable to remember where he was, until the memories came crashing back and sent another salty wave of despair across his heart. The dust wouldn't let him rest. But sooner or later he would grow still and his breathing would become more regular and he would fall asleep there on the earth, side by side with Mulder. There was another thing. In the narrow gap between his suit and respirator a butterfly lay curled. It was a beautiful insect, wings orange and black and yellow, eyes like burning coals. Overlooked by the two men in their mad rush to cleanse themselves of the other bugs, it lay flattened against the rubber like a glittering brooch, waiting for the right time. For its time -- * * * Haniver awoke with a start. Her dream was etched vividly in her mind. She had been kneeling in a forest where the trees were as white as bone, gathering a heap of brambles, laying them before a hill of thorns, a strange sense of pity stirring in her chest, and -- She sat up. Her left arm was numb, verging on pins and needles. Rubbing it absently, Haniver looked around the laboratory. Although the windows were still shaded and taped shut, she could see yellow lines of daylight shining through. It was morning. The others were already gone. She had overslept. "Shit!" Haniver rose on shaky feet and headed for the door, her arm hanging from her shoulder like an alien piece of flesh. She tried to check her watch, had to grab her useless wrist and physically raise it to eye level. It was seven o' clock. Somehow she had managed to stay unconscious for almost ten hours. It was almost time for her next report. Glancing down, she saw that her shirt was still splattered with monkey blood. Jesus. She had been sleeping in the gore of the necropsy and hadn't even noticed it. She felt incredibly filthy, wanted to peel off her clothes right there: she had to take a shower, to scrub away the blood and grime and exhaustion, before finding her video transmitter, before sending her report, before joining the others. The others. Haniver reddened at the memory of last night. She had cried in front of them all: only a few tears, but each drop had boiled over with her own humiliation and self-loathing. It felt like they should have steamed away, leaving angry burns around her eyes. Sometimes she wished that she could purge herself of all emotion, just scorch it all away, leaving nothing behind but the ash of a disciplined hardcase. As it was, she realized that she did better in cases where everyone was already dead. Give her a subway station crammed with bodies and she could cut them all open and trace the path of gas down each stagnant bloodstream; if Jonestown happened again, she could clean up the mess and spear paper cups with the best of them.... Outside, her dread vanished. The jungle looked peaceful and passive; the gray morning sun flattened out the features of the plantation, made them dull and uninteresting and hardly terrifying. Last night felt like a nightmare, a fantasy that could be bleached away like a yellowing photograph: but she knew better than that. Dead butterflies were still splattered against the laboratory window. Haniver removed a glassine envelope from her pocket, unsheathed her knife and carefully scraped a few bugs from the glass. When samples were collected and safely put away, she felt a lot better. She turned, sprinted down the path. Inside the dormitory, the shower was already running. Haniver grabbed the towel and knapsack from her room, paused in front of the closed bathroom door. She heard the muffled sound of the water. Rapped on the door with her knuckles. Scully said something unintelligible through the splashing noises. Haniver didn't reply. She was hot and sweaty and covered with monkey gore and after a moment realized that she didn't want to wait. So she just stripped off her clothes and went in. Inside, the shower curtain was closed. She drew it aside, startling Scully. The soap tumbled from her hand. "Wha -- ? Haniver?" Haniver mimed a downward knifing motion, hummed a few bars of Bernard Hermann. "Mind if I join you?" she asked. "There's room enough for two...." "I guess so, but -- " "Thanks." Haniver climbed into the shower, nudging Scully aside to stand beneath the nozzle. The water was icy cold but it was exactly what she needed. "Sorry about this." "Um, that's okay." After an awkward moment Scully joined Haniver beneath the freezing droplets, the hair plastered to her head like a helmet. Rinsing away the suds, she tried to make conversation. "How does the weather look?" "The sky is pretty cloudy. Rain shouldn't be more than a few hours away." Haniver produced a bottle of lemon-scented shampoo and lathered up, her slippery shoulders rubbing against Scully's back. "I assume that we're leaving as soon as the weather cooperates." Scully stood silently for a moment, shivering, skin prickling from the chill. "I don't know. I hope so." She looked worried. "Mulder and Baker are missing." The bottle slipped from between Haniver's fingers. It hit the floor of the shower and bounced twice. It was a few seconds before she could speak. "How long have they been gone?" "They could have been out all night. I didn't notice they were missing until this morning. They took their biohazard suits, so they should be all right." But Scully's voice betrayed a deeper anxiety as she opened the curtain and stepped out of the shower, dripping. "And what about Kovac?" "Nothing." "That's bad." Haniver pulled the curtain shut again. She watched through the semi-translucent plastic as Scully's silhouette toweled off, propping one leg up on the toilet seat, then the other. Haniver's heart filled with a vague uneasiness, and perhaps the beginnings of paranoia. First Kovac, now Mulder and Baker. There was something at work here, some kind of machine that she could only watch from the outside, guessing how the gears were meshing. The freezing water from the shower drowned her anger, leaving it to smolder. She wondered what kind of deal the three men might have made. "How did we miss it?" Haniver suddenly said. She had not been aware that she was going to speak. "Miss what?" asked Scully, wrapping herself in a towel. Haniver turned off the water, teeth chattering. "We were careful, we did the autopsies together -- so how did we miss the goddamned butterfly bites?" "There were bites everywhere," Scully said. "The men had been living in the jungle. We didn't think it was unusual." She opened the door and went out. "The lethal dose is probably no more than a single bite," was the last thing she said. That was what Haniver wanted to hear. After Scully had exited, she emerged from the shower, dried herself off, took her damp towel and stuffed it beneath the door. Pulled on shirt and shorts and attached the knife to her belt. Fished a rubber band from her pocket, gathered her hair back in a wet ponytail. She regarded herself in the mirror and decided that she looked all right under the circumstances. Finally Haniver took the video transmitter from her knapsack and placed the antenna in the window. Plugged it all in and turned on the power. Hearing the familiar burst of static, she felt far from home and inexplicably lonely. For a heartbeat's time she wondered whether any of this was worth it. There were moments when it seemed like her life was driven by momentum alone. By inertial forces. Sometimes she would stop and look at what she did -- or listen, really listen for the first time, to what she was saying -- and feel as though she were acting a role in someone else's story. Then Haniver blinked her eyes and the feeling disappeared, as it always did. It was replaced by apprehension. In a few seconds she would know whether or not Kovac had made it back with the poison. The butterfly specimens were in her pocket, pressing against her heart. The screen flickered and the image of the chain-smoking man appeared before her. The bathroom door opened. Haniver's hand slammed down on the ABORT switch hard enough to crack the case. The screen went black again. But she had been a fraction of a second too late. She could see a pair of dusty boots in the doorway. They were yellow biohazard boots. There was no hurry to lift her eyes and see whose they were. For some reason she remembered something that Dante had once written -- something about how the urge to escape scorn made you unjust against your own just self. Haniver understood what Dante had meant. * * * It was Mulder. He had removed his hood but still wore his biohazard suit. It was grimy beyond belief, encrusted with the white dirt of the rain forest, with smears of ichor, of toxic blood. He was tired. He looked at Haniver with equal parts exhaustion and anger, a hung-over, defeated anger that fit his face well. As if he were used to this kind of betrayal. Mulder drew his pistol, letting his arm dangle by his side. "Call him back," he said. Haniver's eyes flicked down to the gun. "Are you threatening a fellow agent, Fox? You don't need to do that." "Maybe not." Mulder gestured toward the video transmitter with the barrel of the pistol. Now his exhaustion seemed to be bleeding away, leaving only the anger behind. "Just call him back, Haniver." Haniver turned to the transmitter. Her knees and hips ached from squatting on the bathroom floor for so long. There was a small red button on the side of the transmitter case and Haniver pressed it without hesitation. A soft buzzing noise began to emanate from within the innermost workings of the machine: and then a sudden feverish heat. She had triggered the self-destruct protocol. Flames erupted from the case and swiftly consumed the transmitter in less than fifteen seconds. The sharp, acrid smell of melting plastic hung in the air. Click of the safety latch. Mulder was pointing the pistol at her head. "Get up." Haniver rose slowly. "Where are we going?" There was a trace of a smile on Mulder's face. "We're going outside," he said. "The butterflies could come back." "All the more reason for you to talk quickly," he said. "Let's go." They exited the bathroom. Haniver left the smoldering box of the transmitter behind. They went down the hall with Haniver in the lead, Mulder following with the gun. Some kind of crazy calm had wrapped itself around her heart, a feeling she had known only a few times before. There had been an incident in Seattle. She had been standing in the corridor of a shabby apartment building, about to apprehend a suspect who had been cooking up nerve gas from bleach and drain cleaner, when three bullets had smashed through the wooden door and hit her just below the edge of her Kevlar vest. She had felt warm blood pour across her hands, but there had been no pain or fear: only a numbing sense of peace as she returned fire and killed her unseen assailant and leaked vital fluids across the spinach-colored carpet while her partner called 911. It had not been an out-of-body experience: if she had sensed her soul pulling apart, she would have gripped the earth with her fingernails and gone screaming into that infinite light. Here there had been only silence, except for the strangely soothing sound of her own heart's blood ebbing away. That was how it felt now. They went outside. Haniver kept walking until she realized that the sound of footsteps on the gravel path behind her had stopped. She turned. Mulder had seated himself on the ground, and the pistol was back in its holster. He looked out into the jungle. The rows of trees were dark and monumental; more than ever the rain forest resembled a solid wall of growth, clotted with the leavings of the past. Haniver sank down next to him and thought about the butterflies. Long silence. "Did Kovac send you?" asked Haniver suddenly. Mulder closed his eyes. "No." "You aren't a part of this?" she asked. "You don't know anything about this?" "No." Mulder peeled off his gloves. It was a delicate, almost clumsy operation to undo the flaps and velcro tabs, but finally he managed to take them off and look at his naked hands. Compared to the big yellow gloves, they seemed tiny, almost shriveled. "But I want you to tell me." Haniver looked down. From the loose sandy soil between her feet sprouted a blade of grass, rough and serrated like the edge of a sword. For a long moment there seemed to be nothing else in the world except this blade of grass and the bead of dew depending from its tip. Its green was vivid against the dead white earth. "They want the poison," she said. "Kovac brought it to their attention." "He approached them first?" "Yes." Haniver undid her ponytail, ran a hand through her damp hair. "They moved in the same circles," she said miserably. "Kovac worked with the DOE for fifteen years before going into the jungle. He would have met these men in Washington -- the ones who step out of the shadows whenever something needs to be buried in the name of national security. Maybe he did one of them a favor once, and kept the phone number. When the bodies started coming in from the forest and he realized the project was doomed, he gave them a call." "And offered them a new biological weapon." Haniver nodded. "Looking back, it's obvious that this could not have been an act of ordinary terrorism. Terrorists don't work like that. Either they advertise their involvement or they make sure the bodies are never found. They don't leave twelve dead men in the middle of the forest with no sign of what killed them. No. This was something new." A cloud passed before the sun, plunging the place where they sat into shadow. Haniver felt as if she were giving birth, purging herself in one savage labor of all the clotted, tangled, secret eviscera that had been gestating inside her. "The few details we had were enough to set the wheels rolling," she continued. "If this was a chemical attack, it was unlike anything we'd ever seen. If it was the result of some natural toxin, it was one of the most lethal poisons on record." "So they came to you in Washington." "Yes." "Why?" "They needed another angle," said Haniver. "They wouldn't entrust a job like this to only one man. I had the right background. I knew chemical weapons. I accepted their terms and arrived in Suriname only a few hours after you did." "And what did they tell you about the case?" "Nothing much. From what I managed to discover on my own, I thought we might be dealing with curare and some unknown admixture. But after I came to Paramaribo and found that Kovac had already commissioned an autopsy, I knew that I couldn't conduct this investigation in the regular fashion. It was a goddamned race, and Kovac was always one step ahead." Mulder pressed his fists against his forehead. Haniver saw that there was a big purple bruise above his left eyebrow. "So what was the prize, then?" he asked. "It doesn't matter now," she said bitterly. "You know what they had to offer. I could have seen some advancement, some fucking progress after ten years in the Bureau." She reached down with her fingers, tore away that blade of grass. "But it doesn't matter. I think that Kovac made it back to Paramaribo with the evidence he needed, with samples of the butterflies, and the game is over...." As she said these words, Mulder stood and walked away, his face a hard mask of anger. She followed him. "Fox, wait." He did not turn around. "This is the worst mistake you ever made, Haniver." "I -- " "Even if you were determined to climb the ladder at any cost, I never thought you'd prostitute your career to the goddamned forces of darkness. If you think that the game is over, you're wrong. Once you get in bed with these men, you become part of it for life." Haniver stopped on the path. "Fox, look at me." Mulder turned around and Haniver hit him in the face. It was only a glancing blow to the chin, but it took them both by surprise. The moment froze. They stood facing one another, a spot of red blooming just above Mulder's jawline. "I hate you," said Haniver, her voice almost breaking with amazement. "I do. One day you're going to leave that basement office and find that not everyone can afford to be a martyr. You survive because you have the fucking mandate of heaven. But I don't have that mandate, and I need to work in other ways." "Haniver -- " "I'm not finished." Haniver felt tears coming, fought them with every ounce of fury and pride she possessed. "Ever since we first met I knew that you were going to achieve everything I ever wanted without even trying. You had the looks, the money, the connections, the talent. If you had played their game for five fucking minutes you could have owned the FBI. But you threw it away." She wiped her eyes angrily. "I never had the advantages that you seem to take for granted. I've invested everything I own. I killed myself just to remain on your level. But the promotion always went to someone else, to someone who knew a senator or had a famous father in the Bureau. This is what I've always had to deal with, Fox. So don't accuse me of whoring myself to the dark side." Mulder turned, went towards the lab. "I know these men better than you do," he said. "I've lied and I've sold information and I've given up more than you can imagine. I've been fucked up the ass more than once. Don't think I had it easy. I've had to cut myself deep just to maintain what little freedom I have." "But what do you do with that freedom? You investigate cases and file away the evidence and accumulate papers and paranoia and never do a goddamned thing with any of it -- " "You're crazy if you think that collaboration will accomplish anything more." They stood at the door of the laboratory. "You've got nothing to lose because you threw it away years ago," Haniver said. "You act as if you expect everyone to treat their lives the same way. But I care about myself. I care about my life." Mulder sighed. For a second he looked terribly old, strain and anxiety pushing their way up through his skin. "I care about my life, too," he said. * * * They went inside. Tension hung between them like fire but none of the others seemed to notice. At one end of the lab, Scully was peering through a double-barreled microscope at a slice of the monkey's brain; at the other, Doyle took blocks of styrofoam and placed them carefully within an ice chest -- samples of copal oil and leaf cuttings. Baker had removed his biohazard suit and laid it across the table, checking it for rips or tears. His respirator was off to one side. Looking up from the microscope, Scully met them with a frown. "Bad news." "I'm used to that by now," Mulder said. Wearily, he began to strip off the rest of his rubber suit, dropping the pieces one by one on the floor. "Lay it on me." Scully peeled off her latex gloves. "Judging from the way this toxin behaves in the nervous system, none of our chemical precautions will do a damned bit of good. The HI-6 or atropine injections won't slow the poison, for example." Haniver moved past Mulder. "What about the pyridostigmine and diazepam tablets?" "They're about as effective as baby aspirin. If one of these butterflies bites you, there's nothing we can do but watch you die." Scully removed the slide from beneath the lens, examined the dead wafer of gray matter. Her eyes were puffy from strain. Defeated. "I wish I had something more encouraging to tell you." Haniver went over to Baker, helped him to check his biosuit. It looked like a flayed shell, the empty remains of a creature that had molted and flown away. "That's a goddamned shame," she said, picking up the respirator. "Yeah." Doyle shut the lid of the ice chest. "Kovac never knew what hit him." Haniver froze. Mulder peeled off the last of his suit and waited. There was a certain coldness in his heart as he wondered what strange mixture of horror and triumph and fury filled Haniver at the news. He had been close to telling her several times: but whenever he tried to say something, he had remembered how Kovac had died with a mouth full of butterfly wings, and had swallowed his own words in the same spirit. "We found him in the jungle," Baker said. "He was killed by the butterflies." "He's dead?" Haniver looked as though she had been kicked in the stomach. "But...." She trailed off, then turned to Mulder. There was murder in her eyes. "He was dead and you didn't tell me," she said, still holding the respirator. "I told you everything, you son of a bitch, but you didn't tell me he was dead...." Mulder grabbed the respirator angrily from her hands. "Yes," he said. "He ran into the forest and got himself killed for the sake of everything you and these men represent -- " In his left index finger came a sudden pain, like the prick of a needle. Mulder broke off. Looked down. Lying in the palm of his hand was a tiger complex butterfly. It was dying. Its wings were ruined and torn but it had crawled out from under the respirator and injected its poison just above the first joint of his index finger. The mark was a small white lump with an inflamed pinhole in the center. The butterfly had left its head and jaws buried in his skin. As Mulder watched, it fluttered twice and died. Time stopped. No one spoke. The moment hung suspended with something like awe. Every detail of the room around him -- the tables, the tall stools, the light shining through the windows, the shock rising in the faces of the others -- took on the monumental vividness and depth of a Renaissance engraving. One thought pounded into his brain again and again. He was going to die. He thought about the look on Kovac's face when they had turned him over with his eyes eaten away. The interval between heartbeat and heartbeat seemed to stretch out into an infinity of emptiness. Mulder looked at Scully and saw the agony there, felt the same agony rise inside him, a sadness born of silence and wasted time. He was going to die. But this was not right. No. Not like this. These thoughts moved through Mulder's mind in the space of half a second. He opened his mouth, was about to speak, didn't know what he was going to say -- when a sudden hope shot itself like a bullet into his goddamned heart. There was no time to think it through. He faced Haniver. "Cut it off," he said. Haniver stared at him, not comprehending. "What?" Mulder crushed the dead butterfly in his fist and dropped the respirator to the counter. It fell with a dull clank. "Take your knife and cut off my finger," he said. His voice did not seem to be his own. "I've got maybe ten seconds left." He put his hand on the table, fingers splayed wide. Shut his eyes. "Do it now." Mulder was right. He had ten to twenty seconds before his pulse pumped the poison past his lowermost knuckle into the rest of his body. If she cut off his finger now he might live. Haniver unsheathed her knife. It was her big blade, made from a steel railroad spike, pounded flat and sharpened to a razor edge. Haniver gripped the handle and stared at Mulder's left hand, lying flat against the counter like a starfish. Raised the knife high above her head. Looked at Mulder. He looked back. For the smallest fraction of a second they shared an unspoken understanding, an understanding beyond words. "I'm sorry," Haniver said. Then she reared back and brought the glittering edge of the knife down on Mulder's finger as hard as she could. * * * Morning came and Quassapelagh strode through the abandoned Tirio village, the pale mist twining around his ankles. Nowadays he rarely spent much time in the village itself, choosing instead to hang a hammock in the jungle whenever he felt the need for sleep. His home had become depressing. He had built the houses with his own hands, cutting the reeds, bundling them together and raising them with pulleys to make the roofs; but today everything was falling apart, everything was crumbling, and Quassapelagh understood that he was too old to begin again. He had lived in a dozen countries and watched the sun rise from a thousand horizons, but the law of entropy held firm no matter where he went. Only old age could teach you that. You could create a semblance of order in your own life, but eventually it turned to dust. Even the forest would dissolve someday. But one thing would remain. The Mai d'agoa would outlast the jungle. It had been here since before the continents had shifted, since the time when South America and Africa had nestled snugly together; it would linger long after the face of the world had been remade again. He knew that now. He had seen the ribbon of light for the second time, and knew what would inevitably follow. But that didn't mean he couldn't stop it. Before, he had remained passive out of terror in the face of the unimaginable. Now Quassapelagh tired of waiting. He went into the storage hut, moved past the piles of wood, came at last to his bows and arrows. Took them gently down from the thatched roof. These bows were his pride and joy, carved from snakewood, glowing softly with beeswax and berry juice, trimmed with parrot feathers. He knew no other work of art that could move him so deeply. He selected the largest bow and set it aside for now. He chose his five best arrows, running his finger along the eagle feathers. You didn't use these for hunting pacas or tapirs. You saved them for larger things, special things. Like the jaguar. Or something else. He set the arrows next to the bow. Then he stood on his toes, reached behind the pile of unfinished canoes and felt around until he found the bamboo vial. It was about three inches long, sealed with a wooden plug. Squatting on the ground, he opened it -- and carefully let the contents spill out into his hands. Quassapelagh looked at the arrowheads for a long time. He didn't know why he was bringing the curare along. He doubted whether the poison would be of much use. But there were some things you couldn't explain. The traditional Tirio legend of the origin of curare had been whispered to him in the cradle; it stirred his blood in a way that only the earliest memories of his childhood could do. This was the legend: The first man in the world had loved a woman who could transform herself into all the creatures of the jungle. He married her, and she taught him the arts of making bread, and the secret of the arrow-poison. Anxious to test his new weapon, he went hunting and killed all the monkeys in the rain forest until only one was left; it begged him to spare its life but he slew it anyway; but when the monkey fell from the tree, he realized that it had been his wife. That was why curare was sacred. Everything it destroyed carried with it some buried ancestral memory of this lost love. It had taken Quassapelagh his entire life to understand that story. Mankind had once been married to the rain forest, had known the love that the natural world reserved for its own kind: but now man was a stranger here. Now love had turned to hate. He understood that now. Before, he had remained silent because he had believed that the ways of the forest should be respected even if that meant standing aside as men died and the Mai d'agoa awoke; but now he knew better. The forest was not his home. He no longer had a home. Thus it was with the sense of something irretrievably lost, with the bitterness of the man who takes his dead wife into his arms, that he went towards the river. He gripped his bow, tucked the bamboo vial of curare into the belt of his breechcloth. His canoe was ready in the tall grasses. In two or three hours he would be at the plantation. With luck, everyone there would still be alive. * * * The storm began around nine o'clock. The team was seated glumly together in the laboratory when Scully heard a light tap on the roof above; she looked up, heard another, and another. Rain was falling. A moment later the room filled with the soft murmur of droplets drumming against corrugated metal. She turned to the windows. Water splashed against the glass, leaving small starbursts and finally washing away the bodies of the tiger complex butterflies. Mulder sat next to her. His mutilated hand was beneath the edge of the table, out of sight. He kept it there because he didn't want to look at it. Scully had injected him with Lidocaine and the pain had diminished to a dull throbbing ache, but the sense of emptiness, of loss, was much worse. His hand was no longer his. Haniver had chopped his left index finger cleanly off. The bone had snapped like a pencil. Even through the pain he had seen that piece of himself lying there impotently on the table and almost screamed: the nail needed to be trimmed, he had thought in a daze, but now it was only a scrap of flesh. He only had three fingers left. Scully had bandaged him as well as she could, but it couldn't disguise that primary fact. His left hand was narrow, like the hand of an alien. But at least he was alive. "There's still a chance for replantation," Scully had said, taking the finger and wrapping it in plastic and packing it in sterile ice. But she was shaking badly. She tried to smile. "Oh God, Mulder -- you really had me going for a second." "Yeah," he said. "Yeah, I know." Doyle was mopping up the blood -- it seemed to have spilled everywhere. He shook his head. "Shit. I've got to tell you, Mulder, that was the gutsiest thing I've ever seen. That's a story I'm going to be telling to my fucking grandkids." "This will all make a good story someday," said Haniver. She put an arm around Mulder's shoulders, just held him like that for a long time, as if she were trying to draw some of his pain into her body. But Mulder only sat in silence, feeling the dizzying agony bleed away bit by bit. He thought about how it could have been worse, a lot worse. But it didn't do much good. Now, as the rain began to fall, he brought his left hand from underneath the table and examined it. It was bound in gauze, surgical tape. His index finger had an itch on the knuckle of its first joint, even though he no longer had an index finger. "Fuck," he said. Baker closed his eyes, listening to the rain. "All right. We need to suit up and get out of here as soon as we can. There's no telling how long this storm will last." They rose. It took Mulder a second to pull himself together for the trial ahead but finally he joined the others, struggling to get his suit onto his body with only one good hand. Scully and Baker quietly helped him dress, attaching his respirator and tugging on his gloves. The left glove didn't fit very well. The first finger hung abnormally loose, like an empty egg sac. Mulder toyed with it with something like horrified fascination. And then they were ready to go. The five remaining team members stared at one another, standing there in the middle of the room in their bulky yellow spacesuits, each breath heightened and deepened by the hiss of the respirators. Far above them, the rain continued to fall. Somewhere outside there lurked a death that none of them wished to imagine: but there was no denying it. They were in the killing jar. All that remained was to step into the abyss and accept whatever came. Baker thought about the weight of the dead men in his arms. Haniver remembered her own tears. Scully flashed back to the moment when she'd realized that Mulder had been poisoned. And Doyle saw the face of Joan of Arc. "Goddamn," Mulder said finally. "We've all got to die sometime. Let's give it a shot." They went outside. * * * The sky was the color of burnished iron. The rain came down hard, pounding and pulverizing the soil into a kind of thin gravelly clay; beyond the sound of raindrops not a whisper arose from the jungle, as if all nature had withdrawn to observe the coming drama in silence. Baker led the way, the others following behind him in single file. His boots left waffle-shaped depressions in the wet dust. His biosuit was still filthy with grime and insect blood; the water made the ichor run again, dripping in black streaks and rivulets along his arms. After him came Mulder, Scully, Doyle and finally Haniver. They each carried one parcel or knapsack. They trudged down the gravel path, isolated from each other by their thick rubber cocoons. The gate. Baker spun the dial of the padlock and pulled it open, unwound the heavy chain. Took a breath. Beyond this fence was the jungle and a half-mile walk between them and the river. He tugged on the gate; it swung easily open until the way to death or safety stood unbarred before them. The others filed out one by one. Baker waited until they were all outside the plantation; then he turned, took the chain and relocked the gate. He didn't know why. Walking beneath the trees was like moving through the belly of a beast. The canopy took the rain and sluiced it and made it run trembling down the veins of broad leaves, drop by drop, like bile or the fierce acids of the stomach. Every trunk was overgrown with life. Mulder's heart was pounding. The stump of his missing finger had taken on the vague soreness of a pulled tooth, and it seemed to pulsate inward and outward with every beat. Mulder saw a flash of orange on his right. Turning, he felt a heady jolt of fear -- it seemed like the jackhammer blows of his pulse would burst through the bandages on his left hand and fill his glove with blood -- before realizing that it was only one of the plastic flags, marking the spot where someone had died. "Shit," Mulder said. He suddenly perceived how close to the edge he was. He had been holding himself together with brute willpower, but if he relaxed or allowed anything to invade his senses everything would fly apart, everything would collapse. As if losing a finger had opened a spigot through which his courage and strength could drain away, flowing out in a mad rush if he didn't keep everything under tight control. Even the snap of a twig could undo him. He kept playing it over and over again in his head. The sharp pain of the bite. The knowledge that he was going to die. For all he knew, he was the only one to ever have been bitten by these insects -- to have felt the poison in his veins -- and survived. It made him feel like he knew them somehow. He had been tainted and had cut out the impurity. But a trace remained. It put fear into his heart. He wished that he could have that pain again, the unbelievable pain of knife cutting into bone, just so he could nourish it and use it against the fear. The ground in front of him was slippery and damp. He kept his eyes on that. Baker walked a few steps ahead of him, his boots encrusted with dirt. They had already gone maybe a hundred yards. He could hear Scully behind him, struggling to keep up on -- he smiled -- on her little legs. If he'd ever said that to her out loud, she would have taken the knife and sliced off something else for free. In the air, a lone bird screamed and was silent. Another hundred yards. Inside his biosuit, Mulder was soaked with sweat. His shirt felt like a membrane, a loose second skin, adhering wetly to his back. Behind him the plantation was already gone, swallowed up by the trees. Now they were completely surrounded by the jungle, a line of yellow ants weaving its way through the rain. He slipped on the slick mud. Another hundred yards and they were almost halfway there. He glanced over his shoulder at Scully, caught her eye, saw her trying for a smile but not managing it. Not quite. Another hundred yards and they had passed the midway point. They were going to make it. Mulder felt a flood of crazy hope. He thought he could see the thin dark line of the river in the distance. Then the rain stopped. One moment it was coming down in a torrent; the next, and it was over. The drops slackened off so quickly that none of them had any time to realize what was happening. But the rattle of water against their hoods was gone. At once the forest went completely quiet; the sound of a falling pebble would have cut through the air like a bullet. The hush felt sacred, like the inside of a church. "Fuck." Doyle's voice was solemn. His eyes flicked uneasily from side to side. "I knew this would happen." "Now we need to hurry," said Baker. "It's not too much farther. We can make it. Come on." He waved them ahead and the others began to move again, to move as quickly as the respirators and suits would allow. The only noise was the soft gritting of soil beneath their feet as they pressed forward through the rain forest. None of them spoke. This was the final stretch and they all knew it. But if the butterflies found them again, no one would escape. The suits were designed to prevent contamination from gas or microbes, not to withstand a frenzied attack from a hundred thousand insects; Mulder knew that his suit probably wouldn't survive a second assault. One breach was all it would take. One rip. He lowered his head and continued onward. Running was impossible within the protective outfit but he pushed himself as far as he could go, his bruised head pounding from thirst and exhaustion. "Goddammit," he said to himself. "Just another thousand feet. That's all you need -- " Mulder collided with Baker, almost knocking him down. The other man had stopped dead-still in front of him. He reeled backwards, teeth clicking together painfully -- and then Scully ran into both them, with Doyle and Haniver just barely managing to avoid the same jam as the entire team skidded to a halt. Baker didn't seem to notice. He was staring into the jungle at something that only he could see. Mulder was about to ask what the matter was when he saw it too. Before them stood a majestic ceiba tree. It was perhaps one hundred feet tall, gray trunk rising smoothly and powerfully from buttressed roots. The crown was broad and flat. The thick horizontal branches radiated out like the spokes of umbrella, draped with mosses and fungi. An orange cross had been painted on the trunk. Mulder went numb. He had seen Baker make this cross himself, using a can of spray-paint to mark the place were Kovac had died. This was the same tree. He looked down, half-expecting to see the body lying at his feet, eaten away by the insects. But that was impossible. Kovac had gone towards the Andes glow, away from the river. He had died on the other side of the jungle. It couldn't be the same tree. Except that it was. Mulder reached out with his good hand, touched the shiny trunk, felt the pebbly texture through his glove. He turned to Baker. "What the hell is going on here?" "I don't know." Baker craned his neck back, straining to see to the uppermost branches. He had forgotten about the butterflies. A strange kind of vertigo had taken hold of him, a disorientation, as if the entire jungle had been moved counterclockwise while they slept. This wasn't right. Kovac had died beneath this tree. He was sure of it. But now it was in the wrong part of the rain forest. He ran his hands across the bark, as if to reassure himself that it wasn't some kind of optical illusion. Pushed. It seemed firm. Baker looked at the orange X, asked himself whether it could have been painted here by someone else, or if he could have done it himself and forgotten about it. But no matter how he tried, he couldn't accept any other explanation. It was the same fucking tree. "Um, hello," said Doyle. "Would someone explain what this is all about?" Mulder didn't reply. Something stirred in the back of his mind as he looked at the ceiba tree. The pain in his hand was gone. He allowed his eyes to slowly travel up the trunk, moving past the cross to the knotted mosses and lichens clinging in places, the hanging lianas. The sensuous bark itself. As his gaze continued upward his fear increased. He knew what he was going to see. He had always known. The terror grew -- he wanted to stop, to shut his eyes and turn away and flee the rain forest in ignorance of this last monumental secret -- but still his gaze moved upward, controlled by something outside his own body, outside even his own will. He looked on like a man who was damned. He looked. The tree looked back. Mulder's mind splintered as the final piece of the puzzle fell annihilatingly into place. He stumbled backwards. The earth began to tremble. Around him the others stood frozen with shock as an obscene cracking and crumbling sound filled the air, the sound of joints creaking and unfolding and unfurling themselves. The bark of the tree rippled. A seam appeared along the trunk. It split open. Mulder saw it happen -- saw the raw white cambium of the wood expose itself in an incoherent shriek of snapping tendons as the tree turned itself inside out, its thin gray skin sloughing away. The branches came down. They tore themselves out of the canopy. A hail of broken leaves and funguses and vines cascaded down like bits of flesh as the branches of the tree extended and stretched themselves, but they weren't branches anymore, they were -- "Run," Mulder said. "Run!" He turned and pushed the others back. The spell broke. Baker and Doyle tripped over their own legs and went down and kept going anyway, crouch-shambling away on all fours. Haniver followed, unable to take her eyes from what they had thought was a tree. She remembered the bird. The fucking bird in the copal trees. It had looked like a pruned branch. It was the way of the rain forest. Everything was camouflaged and disguised and hidden, everything pretended to be something else, and you thought you had broken through the final level of deception until the ground itself gave way beneath your feet. Until the truth itself didn't mean the same thing anymore. Until -- "No," she said. The Mai d'agoa pulled its roots out of the soil. The roots were segmented legs. It flapped its branches. The branches were wings. Mulder could feel the hot breeze on his face as the heavy pinions beat twice and rent the air around him with an unholy roar of self-awareness, of awakening, of resurrection. The wings were mossy and encrusted with brown filth, like the wings of a cryptic butterfly. They were enormous. They were the size of sails. He remembered the satellite photos. The shimmering blur of darkness that had been captured in the sky above the plantation. "Oh God," said Mulder. He understood. He understood everything. There was an agony like the hell of being born. The creature towering above them writhed and shivered like it would pull its own body apart, tear itself to shreds just to release itself from the maddening itch of metamorphosis; and inch by inch its head emerged from the pulsing core of the trunk. Its head was covered with slime. Its mouth was glued shut with it. Its head was triangular, the color of a healing burn, the dead scaly pinkness of a larva; then it opened its eyes and Mulder saw that they were huge compound eyes with hexagons of yellow and orange and black. The eyes were filled with fluid. They were set into the sides of its head like those of a fer-de-lance. It was the Mai d'agoa, oh God, it was the mother of the river -- his brain short-circuited -- the serpent and the tree and the butterfly welded together like lovers -- It rolled its eyes and lowered its head. Mulder had forgotten to run. He stood rooted to the spot, transfixed by the greatest sight he would ever see, staring up at the creature and not realizing until it was too late that it was staring back. It had seen him. It brought its head down until it was only a few feet away from his face. He could have extended his arm and touched the raw pink snout. Its face was a horrifying blend of the reptilian and the insectile. The head was the size of his entire body. The man and the dragon regarded one another for a long moment. Mulder was beyond fear. He might have been a worm beneath a microscope or a scrap of protoplasm for all the terror he felt. Or a blade of grass about to be torn. His last thought was that it had all been a con game. Then the Mai d'agoa opened its mouth and screamed -- -- and a flood of butterflies poured from its throat. The pressure took Mulder off his feet and hurled him to the ground. There was a loud snap and sudden searing pain shot up and down his arm; he'd broken his wrist, he'd broken his fucking wrist. The butterflies were hot and brittle and they crowded across his body searching for a place to bite. Mulder tried to brush them away but he couldn't. There were too many. The insects covered his faceplace so that he couldn't see anything except for the squirming layers of bugs, their eyes still glittering with the inferno that had forged them deep within the Mai d'agoa. Antibodies. The butterflies were its immune system and he was the virus. His suit was about to give. Someone grabbed him beneath the arms. He felt himself being pulled away. The butterflies clung to him like coral but the other hands fought them off, took big fistfuls and crushed them and tried to keep more from landing. But the air was packed solid. He was dragged another dozen yards and left on the ground. Then someone climbed onto him, covering him, shielding him one body against another. "Scully," he croaked. "Mulder," she said. She was lying on top of him, her faceplace pressed against his. "It's okay, we're going to make it." But she was too heavy. The butterflies were pressing down on top of them both. Beneath him Mulder felt the earth shake and he knew that the it was moving, that the great serpent was coming to destroy the two of them. Like bugs. He took her hand into his and prayed. He didn't know where the others were. Perhaps they had made it to the river. Scully was speaking. "We need to keep moving. Mulder, listen to me. We -- " She broke off. Mulder felt her raise her head. "What is it?" he asked. "What's going on?" Scully didn't reply. She didn't know how to describe it herself. * * * Quassapelagh stood there alone, staring at the Mai d'agoa. He tried to take it all in -- to grasp the creature as a whole -- but his mind couldn't fit around it. He only had an impression of enormous size and infinite age, a great crashing through the trees, the huge maw of the beast breathing a fire that was not fire. The Mai d'agoa dragged itself across the ground, its spindly legs weak beneath the bulk of wings and body. Tiger complex butterflies trickled from its mouth. It had not seen him. It was headed towards the others. Two of them had fallen to the ground only a few paces ahead -- they would be crushed within seconds -- and the rest were running towards the river. The insects would overtake them soon. Unless he acted first. He could attack the creature, distract it and buy them enough time to escape. But then the butterflies would be after him. They would overwhelm him and bite him and kill him before he had a chance to flee. He understood what that meant. He had seen the bodies that Baker had brought to the village. He knew that the breath of the Mai d'agoa brought pain like no man had ever felt or could ever imagine. He was not afraid of death, but he was afraid of that pain. There was only one thing Quassapelagh could do. In the end, the decision was surprisingly easy. Taking the bamboo vial from his belt, he removed the cap, shook out an arrowhead covered with curare. Planted it on the end of a shaft. Then he closed his eyes and plunged the arrow into his arm. The sting was no worse than a pinprick. He withdrew the arrow, saw it reddened with his own blood. The poison was in his system. He had perhaps two good minutes remaining. Perfect. Quassapelagh began to hunt. The Mai d'agoa was only one hundred feet away but he proceeded as if he had all the time in the world, arrow notched and at the ready, moving in a arc beneath the trees as he searched for the right place. The beast of mystery towered before him and he hunted it like a paca. He was not insensitive to the irony of the situation. The dragon was moving. It looked like part of the jungle had uprooted itself and was crawling slowly along the ground, higher than the tallest tree, more gigantic than the mountains themselves. The dragon had branches for claws. The mossy bulk of its body blotted out the sun and plunged the earth beneath it into shadow. Darkness covered the man and woman lying on the ground. One more second and it would be on them. There was no room for mistakes. He noted it. Measured the distance. Aimed carefully, almost intuitively, at that mystical point where the beast's life sparkled like a jewel: and loosed his arrow. It flew one hundred feet in blur of eagle feathers and buried itself in the eye of the Mai d'agoa. The eye collapsed like a balloon. A thick noxious fluid began to pour out in a mess of jellied humors. The dragon turned to face him and screamed, a scream that shook the treetops and blasted the clouds into atoms. The butterflies detached themselves. They were coming for him. He did not move. He faced the others and waved them away, waved them towards the riverside. "Go," he said, staring down the oncoming rush of insects. "Go now." It was a moment before the others saw what had happened. They had been scattered by the attack and were standing or lying dazed beneath the trees but at last they rose, collecting themselves, running in the direction of the waters. Baker was the last to go. Quassapelagh recognized the big man within the suit, saw him hesitate. He knew that Baker would find this difficult to accept. He raised his hand in a gesture of farewell. The message was clear. For every life there was a pattern, and from that pattern came magic and prophecy: but from this pattern came the possibility of acceptance as well. The cubs in the jaguar's belly were a part of the pattern. So was this. Baker understood. He turned around and headed to the river with the others. Only then did Quassapelagh run. He ran as quickly as he could, his brown legs scissoring powerfully. The butterflies were close behind him. He could hear the immense sound of the Mai d'agoa crashing through the jungle. Its wings stirred a warm wind against his back. The poison was working. Quassapelagh pressed onward, feet growing heavy as they kicked up the dust, his muscles relaxing, turning to stone. He could feel it but he kept running and fought the numbness and the paralysis as long as he could, fought it like an enemy, his heart fierce and full of pride. He fell, managed to get back up. Then he fell again and was unable to rise for a second time. There was a place, he thought, where there was no darkness and no suspicion and everything was made of light. Quassapelagh smiled, and discovered that he could no longer breathe. With the last strength he possessed he took handfuls of the soil and clutched the earth tightly to himself. He asked for forgiveness. Perhaps he received it. By the time the butterflies arrived and the great shadow of the Mai d'agoa fell across his inert body, the old Tirio was already dead. * * * "We are blind until the hour of our death," Baker said. "The Mayans understood this. Their mythology speaks of a great ceiba tree that stretches between heaven and earth, its branches encrusted with stars. When the soul departs from the body, it clings to the trunk of this tree and climbs into the garden of the sky, where it feeds on starlight and understands for the first time the nature of its life." Baker sat on the weathered stump in the middle of the jungle. This was the place where Quassapelagh had butchered the jaguar, its unborn cubs tumbling to the ground as its womb was opened and the flesh was sliced from its body. Mulder sat next to him, his broken arm in a sling. The toe of his boot traced idle patterns in the dust. It was almost two o'clock, and the air was green with sunlight. "And what happens after that?" asked Mulder. "After what?" "After the soul understands the nature of its life." Baker placed his hand on the decaying wood of the stump. "Probably it blasts itself into oblivion," he said. "I don't think anyone can make that kind of discovery and survive." Mulder did not respond. The memory of their escape still haunted him. The river had brought them away from the butterflies, their canoe hurtling through the current as the air behind them quaked from the thunder of monumental wings. He had squeezed his eyes shut, afraid that he might look around and see some great darkened shape screaming across the morning sky; but it had not pursued them. They had ridden the river all the way down to the Tirio village and dragged their boats onto the shore. He had only watched, unable to help. Inside the hood of his biosuit, his hair had been standing on end. And so the nightmare had drawn to a close. There were times when Mulder could look around at the sharp, savage clarity of the afternoon light and almost convince himself that it had all been a dream, some strange hallucination brought on by suspicion and fear and the strange spell of the rain forest. But his left index finger was still gone. He had begun to accept that it was gone forever. There would be no replantation; it had been too long, and the cells of that severed scrap of skin and bone were dying one by one. Mulder reconciled himself to the loss. In Washington he would buy a burial plot and return the scrap to the earth, in accordance with Jewish law, committing it to the same soil that would one day hold his own remains. Once he had wished for a peg leg, somehow believing that to live with such a disability would make it enough to simply endure, to get up each morning and face the struggle of one's life. As he looked at the bandaged stump of his finger, he wondered whether he had been right. The next thirty years would determine it either way, he thought: and the sense of loss returned to overwhelm him again. After the five survivors had returned to the deserted village and removed their biosuits and vomited fear into the dust, they had gathered together and talked for more than an hour. There had been only one topic of discussion, although they did not refer to it by name. "I think it remains rooted in the same spot," Mulder had said, "for months or years or even centuries, until something forces it to assume its true form. It isn't so strange. A bird mimics the stump of a dead branch, and a moth can resemble a worm-eaten leaf. Natural selection works in mysterious ways. Maybe this was the logical conclusion...." Scully had shuddered, even though the air was sweltering. "And the butterflies?" "The butterflies were its immune system." But there was more. Only at the very end, as he looked into the eyes of the beast, had Mulder made the final connection. "The insects we found on the copal trees were a part of it, too," he had said, his voice surprisingly calm and coherent, as if explaining these things worked as an incantation against the fear: "It must generate different kinds of butterflies within itself, in the same way that our bodies can produce lymphocytes and phagocytes and red blood cells...." Doyle had understood. "This is how it feeds." "Exactly." Mulder's voice had trembled from the force of discovery. "The butterflies are released to lay eggs on plants like the copal trees. The caterpillars hatch and consume plant material, then metamorphose and return to be reabsorbed by the parent. When we interrupted the cycle by killing the butterflies, we triggered an immune response. The Andes glow was an electrical byproduct of that process. But when the tiger complex butterflies failed to stop the intrusion, the parent was forced to take drastic measures." "It attacked the compound." "Yes." Haniver had been skeptical. "But -- but how could a creature like this come into being?" Silence...and then Baker had reached into his pocket and removed a plastic envelope. Inside had been the butterfly that had been clutched in the hand of the uakari, mangled and crumpled but still recognizable. He had looked into its alien red eyes and reflected that when you examined it closely, the tiny head was not unlike that of a fer-de-lance. "I think the Mai d'agoa was once a butterfly like this," he had said. "Seventy million years might be long enough to produce such a transformation. We always pretend to understand nature," Baker had concluded. "But it has a more extravagant imagination than any of us can ever comprehend." Now the others joined them at the stump. Haniver's face was grim. "We just managed to make radio contact with Paramaribo," she said, as Scully and Doyle followed behind. "The military has control of the city. We won't be able to leave until Aquino comes to take over the plantation." "And what happens when he gets here?" asked Mulder. "I don't know," she said. Mulder wondered what she was thinking. He knew that she had taken specimens of the tiger complex butterflies and sealed them inside a plastic bag and taped them between her shoulders, secure from any searches that Aquino might attempt on his arrival. The butterflies were fixed to the exact place on her back where, if Haniver had been an angel, wings might have sprouted. He leaned against the stump and studied the faces of the others. It was enough to have survived, he realized. Even if you only caught a glimpse of the truth, even if the mystery remained intact, it was enough to have seen beneath the mask, if only for a second. You could find it in a tree, or in a crypt, or in the face of a woman who had been dead for fifty years. You didn't need to know the future. The darkness beneath the branches was what counted, and the foaming current of the river, and the rhythm of wings against the sky. Scully was looking at him strangely. "What is it?" he asked. "You're smiling." "Am I?" Mulder realized that he was. He reached out and took Scully's hand in his own ruined grip. * * * Silence in the rain forest after they had departed. Wind stirred the trees and the thick vines swayed like pendulums, although no one was left to count the seconds. A tinamou moved along the ground, pecking at the dirt for seeds and insects, its steps deliberate and clumsy. Its plumage was brown and gray and it looked very much like a speckled chicken as it plunged its beak into the dust and came up with a piece of fruit, or a beetle, or a spider. The tinamou found a centipede and flew onto the weathered stump to eat it. The bird bit the arthropod in halves and swallowed part of it whole, its beak pecking against the soft wood. The stump began to tremble beneath the tinamou's feet. Before it could react or fly away one of the roots had pulled itself out of the ground, seized the tinamou by the neck and crammed the bird into the black cavernous mouth that had opened in the fragrant bark. The mouth closed. There was a muffled squawk and the sound of crunching bones, and then the forest was silent again. A moment later, the stump uprooted itself completely and crawled off into the depths of the jungle, its segmented legs dragging against the earth. Presently it disappeared into the darkness. Return to "X-Files" by LoneGunGuy